Career Tip: Is a Potential Employer the Right Place for Me?
Published
Author: AMA Marketing Career Network
Summary
Learn ways to get the details you need to make an informed decision about a prospective employer.Evaluating a potential employer’s culture is particularly important and cannot be ignored. When you select an employer, you are choosing a way of life. Understanding the organization's culture and how it works will make it much easier to jump into your new opportunity. Finding the right organizational culture for you will also directly impact your employment satisfaction and future career advancement.
Here are several ways to get the details you need to make an informed decision about a new employer:
Leverage your interviews and internal contacts. During your interview, ask the hiring manager about the company's way of doing business, team dynamics, and his or her own management style. If you know current employees or are introduced to employees during interviews, ask about the work culture, pace of the environment, methods used to motivate the team, and other factors that shape the employer's culture. For possible questions to ask, .
Consult external contacts and sources. Clients, customers, and suppliers can be good sources of information about how the organization operates and how it is perceived from the outside. Also, read what's written about the organization or key executives in professional publications, online, and in local newspapers.
Read how the organization describes itself. Annual reports, employee publications, and executive speeches can reveal a great deal - at least about how an organization wants to be perceived. Organizations with strong cultures generally give wide circulation to their values, beliefs and philosophies. You’ll need to determine whether you can follow and advocate those values and beliefs.
Notice how the organization greets strangers. Is the atmosphere warm, cold, friendly, formal, professional, haphazard?
Study the physical setting. Is the color scheme conservative or bold? Are the facilities well maintained? Does the organization seem concerned about presenting a quality image?
Note the anecdotes and stories people tell about the organization. Do they indicate a concern for employees and customers? What important events are discussed and how are they described?
Observe and inquire about "rites and rituals." Systematic, day-to-day routines demonstrate the kinds of behaviors expected.
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