Uncovering Company Culture

This is a question that was posed:

“The more you know about a company’s culture, the easier it can be to tell what what you can offer to them if there is a match. I wanted to know how you would go about finding which company is the right fit in an industry:

• Company websites provide general content on what kind of personalities they desire.
• Websites such as Vault are based on opinions which could be biased.
• Face to face networking obviously is very resourceful for just about anything when it comes to job searching, but getting into the rare events that occur are very difficult to become a volunteer for and are very expensive to register for.”

My response:

Face to face networking doesn’t require attending expensive events. It would be a good idea to get involved with a professional association or other networking group focused on your industry/job target, but that is only a piece of networking. True networking is 1-on-1 meetings with people outside of events, where you have their undivided attention for 30 minutes or more to equip them to understand your target, and why you would make an outstanding contribution there.

Attending selected events where you will meet the right sorts of people is a great way to make initial connections to some of the right people so that you can then follow up and schedule those 1-on-1 meetings. You can also make connections through:

• Friends
• Relatives
• Past co-workers and bosses
• Vendors you worked with
• Fellow alumni
• Those you’ve served within any volunteer capacity
• People you meet at career or business networking events
• Parents of your children’s friends, etc.

And to uncover company culture…

• You can reach out through LinkedIn and other social / business media to find people of interest, and try reaching out to them to get a chance to chat and build them into your network.
• You can write directly to senior people at companies of interest expressing what you might bring to the table for their operations and asking to meet with them.
• You can read the trade press, and search for press releases and other stories on the industry and target companies.
• And, of course, you can go on interviews and ask probing questions about the way the company operates to establish what sort of culture they have.