I was recently watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta and the ladies were interviewing personal assistants. They were offended when the applicant’s didn’t research them before. I thought that it seemed a bit arrogant that they wanted people to do research on them prior to an interview. Like that job is the only one out there in Atlanta and that people need to bow down and kiss their butts before being paid to do so.
I think that it is a good idea to do a lot of research on a company and the person interviewing before an interview. It helps you get the job, it really does.
When researching a company you WILL find bad things said about them. Almost every negative comment about a company will be from a disgruntled ex-employee or a competitor. There are some factual comments from customers, actual employees that were mistreated, etc. However the majority of them will be from disgruntled ex-employees and competitors.
What you really want to do is take in the scope of clientele, if a company deals with 10,000 people a year and they have 100 complaints that means there is a 99% satisfaction rating with that company. Look at Walmart, they have tens of thousands of employees, service millions of people on a regular basis, and have a huge number of complaints about them.
The red flags that you want to look out for are ones where there a repeated claims about not paying people, physical violence, drugs, illegal or unethical business practices, etc.
You’re going to find ones about Management style, calling people incompetent, etc. Those are all matters of opinion, and since everyone is an individual that means that things might be different for you. However it there are a lot of claims that the employer constantly cheats employees out of money then it’s probably true.
A good thing to do is ask the employer if you can sit and watch the people in the working environment for a few minutes. If they are happy and smiling then chances are that the place is nice. If people walk around like abused children then chances are that you should run.
Either way Google the company so at least you know what some people have said about the company, the worst is that you can ask the Manager that you’re talking to about that. Basically sit there and say, I read this about your company, what’s your company’s side of the story?
It shows that you did your homework and that you don’t but things at face value. That is the worst that you could be, (1) not smart enough to too lazy to do research, or (2) accepting everything as fact.
Tags: Career, Careers, Company, Corporation, Employee, Employer, Employment, Job, Jobs, Life, Management, Review, Scam, Success
