Why You Didn’t Get the Job Part II: Research

If you didn’t read my first part of the series ‘Your Resume and Cover Letter (or lack thereof)’ definitely check it out. Otherwise, thanks for coming back and reading part II of V! 

Today we are going to discuss how to effectively research and prepare for the interview you got because you had a killer resume and cover letter following some of the steps in part I. Researching for an interview is like a game of Chess. You should try to know all of the answers to any question that may come up, and you should also not ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to.

Preparing for your interview can be broken down into three easy parts:

1.  Researching your interviewer

2.  Researching the company

3.  Researching their competition

So let’s dive in.

Researching Your Interviewer:

Researching your interviewer can be an easy or hard task depending on their online presence. Almost always, the best place to start is going to be LinkedIn. Once you find them on LinkedIn, these are the first couple of items I would start looking for:

-  Do we have any mutual connections? If so, who? Would that mutual connection put in a good word for you?

-  Where did they work before their current company? How long were they there? Is there any overlap between your past experience and theirs? Try to make a personal connection between the two.

-  Have they posted any LinkedIn articles? If so, read them. All of them. This will give you invaluable insight into how they speak, write, and what they’re interested in.

-  What articles have they “liked” or “commented” on? Again, this gives you insight on to what they like or what is important to them. 

-  Do they have any volunteer experience or nonprofits they work with? 

-  Go to the bottom of their LinkedIn page, what are their interests? Find 2-3 that you have in common and be sure to remember them. It might be ‘wine lovers club’ or it might be ‘startup community in Denver’. Whatever it is, try and use it to your advantage. 

If your interviewer doesn’t have a LinkedIn page:

-  Try and research the company website for any information on your interviewer. 

-  Try to find the person on Facebook. More times than not, people’s information is not private. Do they have a dog? Two Kids? Anything you can find is helpful.

The idea of researching your interviewer is to be able to build a personal connection to them quickly. You shouldn’t necessarily bring up everything you learned about them (that actually might be creepy), but you should use all of the information you learned to build a personal profile on this person and make inferences to what type of person they are.

Example: 

Susan has a LinkedIn page. She’s interested in wine, in her last three companies she moved up quickly, she volunteers with her local non-profit, and you saw on Facebook that she has two poodles.

You can use this information to build rapport with Susan quickly. When she asks you what your interests are outside of work you can talk about how you love going to this new wine bar in downtown, or how you take your dog to the park to meet other dog lovers. 

This then leaves the question open to you asking: Do you like wine? Do you have any dogs? What do you like to do outside of work? (Remember you’re playing Chess. You already know the answers to these questions but Susan doesn’t know that.)

Researching The Company:

Studying the company you are interviewing with should be a much easier task than researching the interviewer. Most companies want to put as much information about them online as possible for marketing purposes. 

The best place to start is the company’s ‘About’ page. Almost every company has one, and you can typically get a lot of information from that page. 

Here are some key things to look for on the About page:

-  Mission statement

-  How the company started

-  Core values

-  The executive team

-  Number of locations or offices

-  Their blog (this may be on another page)

Depending on the company, you might also be able to check and see if they have a YouTube channel. It’s not uncommon to see a company have product demos, short culture videos, or other promotional videos about the company. 

Researching the competition:

This step can be more or less important depending on the role you’re applying for. This is a critical step for someone in sales or marketing and relatively unimportant if you’re in accounting or finance.

The best place to start is Google. An excellent way to find out who a primary competitor is by just typing in “(company applying for) vs. “and let Google fill in the rest. This will get you a perfect starting point. 

Some of the main points to check out from a competitive standpoint:

-  Pricing (if available)

-  Features

-  Industry advantages

-  Reviews of both or all solutions

It’s awe-inspiring when you’re talking to an interviewer, and you can name some competitors and how the company you are applying to stands out from those competitors. We will discuss more using this information in the next part of the series. 

I know this article was a bit long, but I cannot stress how important your research is. This is what is going to separate you from all the other applicants. It’s going to take some time but put in 1-2 hours of research before you go to a company for an interview. If you do, I will almost guarantee you that you will make it to the next step in the process.

This is part two of my five-part series ‘Why You Didn’t Get the Job’. Check back every Wednesday for the next part. If you haven’t read part I yet, be sure to do so as well! As always, please leave any feedback or comments you may have. I love connecting with new people.

Joey