How to Tackle Company-Based Interview Questions

Interview questions can be split into two categories: Company-based questions and Competency-based questions.

This manual deals with company-based questions. Understanding how to research and understand these questions are key to nailing any interview!

What are company-based interview questions?

Company-based interview questions are questions linked to the company, the role, or the industry in which it operates.

Typical examples:

1.    Why do you want to work for [company X]

2.    What attracts you to a career in software engineering?

3.    Can you tell me about what it is that [Company X] do; can you describe our business model?

How do you answer them?

Obviously, to answer these types of questions you need to have prior knowledge about the company, the role, and the industry – this means you are going to need to do some research!

What to research?

Like the saying goes ‘failing to prepare is preparing to fail’. So the most important part of the interview is the prep you put in before it.

To answer company-based questions, you need to be able to answer questions around 5 main areas:

1.    Why the company?

2.    Why the role?

3.    What their business model is?

4.    Their current projects/current news 

5.    Current industry news

Question 1: Why that specific company 

You need to be able to tell the interviewer concisely why you want to work for their company.

The important thing is to do this in a way that allows you stand out and be remembered.

The best way to do this is to come up with 3 strong reasons why – the aim here is to get creative.

Here are 3 good ways to do this:

1) Find a specific thing that the company does that you really like

2) Add an emotional element to your reason.

3) Match your own values to those of the company or their culture.

To find this information out you need to know about the company’s culture, their values, and their business operations.

To find this info:

·     Company’s culture: social media pages and read glassdoor.com reviews

·     Values: Company website (value section) or do a Google search

·     Business operations/projects: Google news, company website, company Linkedin, and their annual report

Question 2: Why the role

Why the role is very similar to the ‘why the company’ (question 1) but you need to find specific information related to the job role.

3 goods ways to answer:

1) You can back up your reason with your prior experience and your passion for the role

2) Again, add an emotional element to your reason

3) You can highlight your specific traits which will help you excel at the role

Where to find this information:

·     The job card (shows job requirements)

·     Do a Google search to see what traits are needed to do well at the role

Question 3: The Company’s business model

Knowing the company’s business model will be a huge help for the interview.

Basically my version of a business model consists of:

1) What activities they do to make money?

2) Where/how they sell their products/services (online/store/sales team)

3) Their main products

4) Clients/customers

5) Senior management’s strategy

Where to find this information:

To find this information quickly you can download the company’s annual report

Use the following sections:

·     ‘Letter to shareholders’ section

·     The ‘strategy’ section;

·     ‘Business section’

* Each annual report may differ slightly in format but they are roughly all the same.

*Every public company will have an annual report

Where to find a company’s annual report:

·     Google searches

·     Their website to find out this information too.

·     Their investor relations website

Example: type in to Google – ‘[company name] annual report’ or ‘[company name] investor relations’

Question 4: Their current operations and news

Before any interview you should understand what current operations or projects the company is running and any recent news stories about them

This will give you an edge over other interviewees because you will know what is currently going on with the company and will be able to discuss this effectively with the interviewer

To find this out you:

·     Company’s website

·     Linkedin page

·     The Google news section

Question 5: Industry news

The last thing that you want to do is have a quick look at the industry and what big things are happening within in at the time

Having an understanding of the environment that the company operates in will let you connect the dots

How to find this information:

·     Use Google news section

·     Article

Practice out loud to get fluent

Once you gather all your answers you need to practice out loud so you become fluent and feel comfortable answering questions – Please do not skip this!

 Good luck!