COMPANY RESEARCH
How does the company make money:
- Who are the buyers
- Why do they buy
- What challenges facing
What’s the mission of the company:
- Values
- What values they communicate via the leaders social media
- How do they brand themselves, from an external and internal employee persective
What products and services do they offer:
- If a public company
- Understand, the revenue distribution of their products
- .ie apple makes 80% of its revenue from iphones vs. others products
- If private company
- I want to understand what products they sell, any innovations they are announcing
- Challenges with products/ways it could be better
- For tech look at G2 for this research
What industry are they in:
- How is the industry changing
- What trends do you see in the industry
- How will these trends affect the company, do they need to innovate or adapt?
- How are companies responding to these trends
- Is the industry they sell into different, learn about that one too
- Biggest industry challenges and problems
Trends could include: reduction in revenue across the board, international geopolitical situations, product innovation, Economic trends, government regulation, consumer trends, market demographics
Who are their competitors?
- Are they the leader or where do they position themselves in the industry?
- How do they communicate their differentiation
- What do they want to copy of their competitors vs. sell against(What deficiencies do they want to highlight with their competition)
- Are their competitors making big investments
*If a public company in their annual statement(10k) for investors, it would be called a peer group
*If its a private company it can often be found if you search competitors or the product category/reviews
Has the company been in the news?
Research companies Glassdoor/Blind/repvue/few others/search company name linkedin
Why do all of this:
- You want to have high-level questions and conversations
- You want to be able to suggest/discuss challenges for the company
- Especially if you’re coming in at a non-entry level you want to be able to discuss how you role can impact revenue in that interview
- Write a plan innovate, to help before even stepping foot at the company
15 questions for every interview
- 5 Personal Questions
- Building Rapport
- You lived in Texas, then moved to Chicago, what prompted that move and why
- You wrote a few articles, I read them, what is your opinion 2 years later on X
- You transitioned from mid-market sales to enterprise, how was the transition? Hardest parts, easiest parts?
- You’ve been at that company for 15 years, what keeps you there?
- Google their names for articles & read their recent linkedin posts/articles/comments
- 5 Related to the team
- Anything that would affect the teams dynamics
- Is this position a backfill or did the other person get promoted
- How do you manage your team, what elements of your team could be better?
- How do you see this organization, unit/team growing in the future
- What’s the most important initiative this team is working on and why?
- 5 Things related to the company( More important if they’re an executive)
- What’s the biggest challenge the company faces today?
- How are you solving the biggest challenge?
- What’s your philosophy around people management and growth?
- Where do you want the company to be in 5 years?
- Can you share an example of how X company has benefited a customer greatly?
- Can you share examples on how your values shape the employee experience/companies strategies?