5 Easy Ways To Research A Potential Employer Before The Job Interview

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An essential component of interview preparation is research. By researching the company, you won't be caught unaware; you'll better understand the company, its business model, and its culture, as well as what questions to ask during your interview.

Here a 5 Easy Ways To Research A Potential Employer Before The Job Interview!

1. VISIT THE COMPANY'S WEB SITE. Corporate sites usually contain a trove of information about the company's products and services, and frequently feature profiles of the executive leadership team. Larger companies also often share investor relations information, press releases, and corporate announcements.
    
2. READ THE NEWS. Type the company's name into a news aggregator such as Google News or Bing News. If there's important news to be found, there's a pretty good chance you'll see it here.
    
3. LOOK AT LINKEDIN. If the company provides you with a list of the interviewers prior to your meeting, take a look at their profiles on LinkedIn. You're often able to learn about your interviewers' roles, projects, career progression, and more.
    
4. CHECK OUT THEIR REVIEWS. Glassdoor is like the Yelp! of employment. But instead of dining reviews, people dish on their interview and employment experiences. The feedback is anonymous, and in many cases, it tends to be the unhappy employees who share their feedback, so evaluate reviews with a grain of salt. You should be able to identify aggregate views of the corporate culture.
    
5. REACH OUT TO SOMEBODY WHO'S WORKED THERE. Just as an employer is going to perform a reference check on you to make sure you're a good match, there's no reason you can't do the same to them. If you'd like to find out somebody's experience as an employee, ask them. By working your personal network, you should be able to identify an individual who will provide you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Ten Great Ways to Sabotage Your Chances of Getting the Job

Here are ten methods I’ve witnessed candidates – first-hand – employ to ensure that they do everything in their power to sabotage their chances to snag that dream job in the application and interview process.  It’s so easy to throw a wrench in the works!

1. Arrive late for the interview. Don’t bother to call. Then act like nothing happened.

2. Learn nothing about the company in advance of your interview. Then, when asked by your interviewer “What do you know about us,” make something up.

3. Ask how much the job pays. Even after you’ve already had this discussion with the corporate recruiter. Ask everybody with whom you interview.

4. Tell the recruiter you are close friends with the CEO, when you and she met once in passing. Maybe.

5. Be friendly to everybody you meet in the company. Except to the recruiter. In that case, be a total ass.

6. Bring extra copies of your resume. Folded up into a compact square in your pocket.

7. Send a nice, thoughtful thank you note after the interviews to people you’ve met.  Generously sprinkle in typos and misspellings.

8. Guess at your prior dates of employment on the job application. Go ahead, just guess. That way, when the company gets ready to hire you and runs the pre-employment background check, nothing adds up and you get disqualified for dishonesty.

9. Leave your cell phone on. When your phone rings during the middle of the interview, casually take the call.

10. Use your referral network to do everything possible to get in the door with the company. Make sure you ask an executive to sponsor you and they use every bit of their personal equity to push you through and get you an offer in another department. Then, AFTER you’ve received and accepted the offer, make your resume live and searchable on the job boards the company subscribes to, like Monster, so that the recruiter can stumble across it and inform the executive about it.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Three Weekly Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Job Hunting Tips – October 12, 2015

Lemon Squeezy

Here are three simple job hunting tips for you to begin your week!

1. Do some research to know what kind of fashion statement to make at your interview. Generally speaking you can't go wrong with a current but conservative suit. However, if the company you're interviewing with is particularly fashionable or edgy, that may not be the way to go. Cultural fit matters, and interviewers can be kind of judgy if you wear an outfit that's too far off the mark.
2. Ask for a business card of your interviewer. Got to have their name and address right to send a thank you note...
3. It's not considered good form to show up at an office unannounced asking to meet with the recruiter / hiring manager / anybody. Unless the company's advertisement suggests that this is how they'd like to be approached, don't visit without an appointment.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.