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5 things you must absolutely learn about your dream employer

by balki on May 6, 2015 Comments Off on 5 things you must absolutely learn about your dream employer

If you are a job-seeker or active on social media and follow career threads, you must have seen this site already.  In summary, Nina Mufleh, a social media consultant fell in love with Airbnb so much that she created a special site to showcase why she should get a job there.  In other words, she “did” some of her future job even before she applied for one at Airbnb.  Now, that’s a job candidate no one will ignore!

I was so obsessed with her creative approach, that I included her story in our workshop & meetup slide-decks.  When people see this slide, they are both inspired and intimidated.  Inspired obvious, right?  But why are they intimidated?  They start finding reasons for why such public showcasing doesn’t apply to their field/role/company.  What I think is that they don’t know where to start in order to build an impressive, personalized site like this.  Maybe they are right that this is huge undertaking.  But what I tell them is that they could do something with much less effort that 90% of the job-seekers don’t do today:  “Research the company you want to work for”.

Without further ado, here’s the list of top 5 things you must know about your future employer(s)…  long before you apply or interview for a job there:

dream company attributes

  • Primary products and services: You’d be surprised how many of the worker-bees don’t know the products that are the bread-and-butter of their own employer. They know what their division or department does in a best case scenario.  Knowing the breadth of products that a company offers at the corporate-level definitely leads to interesting interview conversations.
  • Types of jobs they hire for: An obvious one but for not so obvious reasons.  We recommend you track the new jobs closely over a period of time (approximately 3 months) to really learn the overarching themes in terms of technologies, disciplines etc.  Again, you are looking for trends and subtle hints in their job descriptions rather than looking to apply in a knee-jerk fashion.
  • Competition: Every company in this world has competition. Knowing your dream company’s competition will not only help you have confident conversations about the marketplace but can also lead to other target employers in the same space that you didn’t think of before.
  • Clients: Especially important for marketing, sales or any business folks to understand the clients and segments a company serves. There is one other powerful reason you want to learn about and clients which you can learn by attending one of our webinars.
  • Value Proposition: I recommend that you watch this very inspiring TED talk by Simon Sinek called “Start with why”. Essentially, we are asking you to dig up the “why” of your dream company.  Again in our experience, a vast majority of the working population don’t know why their company exists or what the inherent value proposition is.  If as a job-seeker you are able to research and articulate this value proposition, you will be light years ahead of your competition, guaranteed!

Now, is that enough material to create a powerful document with the public information about your dream company and combine that with your own analysis?  The result won’t be too far away from what Nina did for Airbnb.

Good luck with your journey towards your dream job and if there is anything we can do to help, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

balki5 things you must absolutely learn about your dream employer