Where to start when researching for an interview
Want to impress at your upcoming interview? Whether you’re a new graduate or have years of real estate experience under your belt, ensuring you do your due diligence before your interview will go a long way to guaranteeing success.
To make sure you’re fully prepared and able to stand out from other candidates, here’s a few bases you should definitely cover when researching before your interview.
1. Deep dive into the company and culture
Knowing the company inside and out before the interview will help in a variety of ways. Firstly, it will help you even further in understanding whether this company is somewhere you want to work. This is somewhere you could potentially work for many years so ensuring the company is the right fit for you is just as important as the company making sure you’re the right fit on their side. Research online and dig into their company culture and their values particularly. See what they say about themselves on their website, their careers pages, on their social media pages, as well as what’s being said about them in other channels like in the news or on review sites. From here you can start to see whether your values align, for example perhaps they come across more cut throat and value profit over people, or perhaps they are more community aligned.
The second thing researching the company will help with is your actual interview questions, both from the interviewer’s end and yours. By getting a better feel for what they value as a company, the clients they potentially have, the areas they work in, their competitors, and everything in between, you’ll likely be able to figure out what kind of questions may spring up in the interview. As well, you can prepare for how you would tackle any questions that come your way, for example, if you know they value certain things or have certain goals as a company, you can make sure you reference these or integrate your knowledge into your answers. On top of this, any gaps in your research and things you can’t uncover make perfect questions for you to pose back to your interviewers. Can’t see what they prioritise as business, ask them. Can’t find out whether they support individual growth or have support networks and mentoring to help your career grow, again, ask them. Remember, the interview is also your time to find out anything you want to know also.
2. Research the hiring manager and the interviewer/s
When it comes to the interview, impressing the interviewer/s is obviously key. So, a crucial step not to miss in your research is to take a look at who they are and what they’re about. Especially if the interviewer is also the hiring manager, so someone you’ll work with on a day-to-day level if you get the job, it’s imperative you understand their background, what interests them, and find the insight you need to help you stand out. Something like their LinkedIn profile summary may offer up some information or insight that at least gives you something to open with or chat about before the interview starts and something to potentially bond over. However just be careful, given some platforms allow the person to see you’ve been looking at their profile, you don’t want to come across like you’ve “stalked” the person online too much.
3. Ask around for opinions
Lastly, another avenue for you to research the company, its people, and everything in between, is to ask around. You might know people who already work there or have worked there previously, perhaps others in the same industry or their competitors, their partners, clients or suppliers. As well, some websites offer exactly this, where present and past employees can comment and review the business, so these can be a good starting point. Any opinion you can gather is a good chance to get an outside view on what to expect both in terms of the interview and for if you get the job. The only word of caution though is to have an open mind, take the opinions as just that, and let the interview do the talking. An ex-employee may be a bit scorned, a competitor may just be out to make sure they get a bad reputation. Especially with negative opinions, don’t just immediately write the company off but take the time to form your own ideas.
