Is the Company a Good Fit for YOU?
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In this episode:
Is the Company a Good Fit for YOU?
When it comes to career changing, we spend a lot of time talking about how to show that you are a right fit for the company or position. Landing a job offer is fun, but it’s only truly great when the company you’ll be working for is a great fit for you, too.
Anyone who’s had either a great boss, or a bad boss, knows how important workplace relationships are for feeling happy at work. But it can be really challenging to assess what a workplace is like, and how people interact with each other from the outside looking in when you’re career changing.
With the people I coach, those who have experienced negative work environments in the past have a lot of trepidation about starting over at a new company. “What if I end up in the same situation I just left?” “How can I know if my boss will really have my back?” “The company culture sounds great on paper, but what if it’s all just marketing?”
I’ve heard all of those concerns and I understand them from the bottom of my heart. It is hard to assess an organization from the outside to know if it's a good fit for you or not. But it’s not impossible!
By following a few practices and asking the right questions, your ability to determine if a company is a good fit for you or not will go way up!
In this episode I share:
The challenges of assessing a workplace from the outside, and tips to work around them
Why looking at team-level factors is more important than company culture factors
Questions to ask before accepting a job offer to gauge fit
The challenges of assessing a workplace from the outside, and tips to work around them
Reading about the company culture on the website
A lot of more savvy companies will have a page on their website where they talk about the company culture, benefits and what a day-in-the-life tends to look like for their employees. These are great, but make no mistake--they are definitely marketing.
What you can glean from these types of web pages is what the standard benefits or office perks are at an organization. For example, if they offer a 401K match, cater lunches on Fridays, or have a gym membership reimbursement program. All of these things are great to know, and likely true offerings the company provides.
But do they really tell you what it’s like to work there? No, they don’t.
I think this is where the biggest confusion lies for job seekers. Companies that market themselves as being innovative, flexible and entrepreneurial-spirited tend to look really attractive on paper.
However, when it comes down to it, sweet perks won’t make up for poor management, negativity or unrealistic schedule expectations. So it’s important to do additional research to find out what it’s actually like to work at a company rather than focusing on the benefits they may offer.
Glassdoor & company review sites
There are a handful of company review boards online, like Glassdoor, that try to fill the gap in this area. But if you’ve ever actually used Glassdoor to help you gauge if a company was a good place to work or not, you’ve probably experienced its shortcomings. The overarching problem with company review sites is that only very motivated employees will ever leave a review.
That means the reviews tend to be either very negative, or very positive--there isn’t much in between.
I typically don’t recommend looking at these reviews at all. Honestly, I think you can tell more about what a company’s culture is like from the quality of the job description than you can from reading employee reviews and simple star ratings.
Recruiters
Recruiters can be great assets to connect with while you’re on the job market. You can learn a lot from them about what companies are looking for in the positions they're hiring for. You can also ask them questions about the company as a whole.
Just remember that the information you get from a recruiter will be biased. They are also marketing for the company.
I recommend leveraging recruiters to learn more about the position and the team it’s part of, but you’ll want to assess these things with scrutiny throughout your interview process as well.
Knowing People Who Work There
Asking people who actually work at the company is your best bet for honest intel. The trouble with this is that you won’t always know someone who works where you want to apply. You can always reach out to people you don’t know for informational interviews (I recommend doing this), but you’re not always guaranteed a “yes.”
Keep in mind that many companies offer a referral bonus to employees who refer candidates that eventually get hired. So especially if you are connecting with someone you don’t know personally, they could be sharing an extra flowery view of the company to increase their chances of you applying and them receiving a bonus.
However, all these things considered, if you use the questions I’ll share in a bit, you will be able to get a pretty good gauge on reality.
Why looking at team-level factors is more important than company culture factors
Now, most of the things I just talked about will give you information about the company’s “culture.” Culture is a huge buzzword and creating a positive culture is something that most organizations actively strive for.
But, when it comes down to it, what a company claims is its culture is more of its ideals than the actual reality.
Think about it, if someone were to ask you what it’s like to work at your company (or your most recent place of employment), you likely wouldn’t start listing off things about the company as a whole. You’d explain what your boss is like, how work does/doesn't get done, how well teams communicate with each other. You’d share what makes you enjoy your job, and what makes your work feel tedious or frustrating.
And almost all of those components will be influenced more by the team you work on than the company as a whole.
I’ve recently been reading Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, published by the Harvard Business Review Press. The first lie that they cover in their book is that people care about what company they work for.
The extensive research they’ve done and reviewed shows that it really isn’t the company that makes a difference in enjoying or dreading work--it’s the specific team people are part of and how that team operates.
This makes common sense when you think about your work experience. Work is way more enjoyable when you like people you work with, feel supported in your work, have clear expectations for success and are recognized for good work you do. All of these things happen primarily at the team level.
On the flip side, maybe you’ve had the experience of working for a company that you thought was really cool, or had a great reputation but you had a poor manager. I’m sure the negativity the poor management experience brought you weighed heavier on you than the fact that the company was cool, right?
With all this in mind, when you are career changing, being able to assess the nature of the team you might be working on is very important.
Questions to ask before accepting a job offer to gauge fit
In order to be able to ask the right questions of a company, you need to know what answers you’ll be looking for in their response.
Everyone wants and needs slightly different things from their job to feel as engaged and positive as possible. So your first task is to determine what those wants and needs are for yourself so that you know how to identify them.
Some questions to help clarify on what you want and need are:
What type of communication do you need from your manager to feel supported in your work?
What type of interactions do you want to share with your team members?
What makes you feel valued at work?
What type of challenge do you need to feel engaged with your work?
What type of consistency or variety do you need on a daily basis?
After you have developed a pretty clear picture of what you know you want from your next team and/or manager, then you can figure out what questions to ask to determine fit.
What does success look like 6 months down the road for this team?
What's your vision for the impact you want this team to have on the company’s goals?
What qualities will help someone excel on this team?
What are the biggest challenges facing the team?
What are the biggest pain points that you experience at work on a daily basis?
What are commonalities among the people that thrive best on this team?
How do team members communicate with each other throughout the day?
How is performance evaluated and communicated on this team?
These are just some questions you can use to gauge how well the team you’re applying to join would fit your criteria for being great.
What questions or tips would you add to the list?
