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How Do You 'Vet' an Employer?
Not-to-desperate asks: "There is lots of info around on interviewing when hiring but what about the other way around? What do you look for in an employer? Are the any 'minimum requirements' that should be met? Obviously if you haven't got a job at all, getting hired is the main criteria, but what if you're jumping ship so to speak? I'm thinking of stuff like better salary, work conditions, type of projects, possibility of on the job training, and so on."
Monster.com has an entire page dedicated to interview tips. They include things like illegal interview questions or talking salary. Generally it's worthwhile to establish top three priorities that you would like to see in a prospective employer.
Choose from wide array of things like good team to work with, free coffee in the office, paid vacation, general atmosphere, opportunity for advancement, trip re-imbrusement policies, overtime policies, sick leaves, vacation packages, perks like gym memberships, availability of good food nearby, company kitchen, dress code, stock options, medical insurance, dental packages, etc. Ask about your top three priorities directly during the interview, when the HR person or manager asks "Do you have any questions for us?" This will tell them that you have thought certain things through, and will also signalize that those are some things you care about, so it must be important to you.
Or just think about the three-four things that were awesome about the previous employer or other companies on the market (like Google allows you to spend one day on your own projects, and they allow pets in the building, Microsoft buys its employees gym memberships, and I think at some point they were also buy Costco cards).
Oh, also forgot to add that Fortune compiles a yearly list of best companies to work for. It looks like they require you to pay to access the articles (like anyone will pony up 5 bucks just to read a single article having no idea about its quality), but get a newsstand copy, check one out at the library, or if you're a student, visit your Careers office.
Fortune also explains why a given company is the best to work for, so writing down a list of things you'd like to see in your potential employer would be helpful for the future.
Do a Dunn & Bradstreet on the company. Any liens, lawsuits, good credit?
Ask to speak to someone who would be your peer at the company. Find out what they think.
Search Fuckedcompany
Onorus drug testing policies are a bad sign.
What do the restrooms look like?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Often in a interview you are asked for some questions.
One question that could be asked, Can I go meet the people I would be working with?
It may or may not fly, but talking to the existing employees of the company sounds to me like the best, most direct way to find out anything you really need to know.
http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/index.htm has information on just about anything a job hunter would want to know.
The bulk of it boils down to getting to know people that work where you want to work, and keep your dignity intact.
Ahhh. So the real purpose of this interview is to try and get free plane tickets to Mumbai....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's not necessary to put the word "vet" in quotation marks. It's not slang or jargon. It means to examine carefully.
I write in my journal
Try and find some employees of the potential employer that you can talk to informally over a beer. You'll get the real poop that way...
First, you sit down and decide what you really want to work on. Try and vet out some of your itches you've been wanting to scratch - working on the kernel of an OS, doing I/O for cool hardware, learning the ins and outs of HIPAA, pissing of the RIAA. Whatever.
Next, make a list of employment opportunities you have a good chance of obtaining. Don't be afraid to look outside the box. There are lots of companies who want to hire you, but have poorly worded want ads. The ad "Looking for filing clerk" is just crying out for some data shuffling, web based interfacing, database sorting application that your wizardly skills are well suited for.
Now make a matrix with rows representing aspects of a job you'd like, and a column for each job. Score those that you know now, and call ahead (random disgruntled employees are great resources) for those that aren't specified on the web or in the ad. Don't forget to include things like 401K, health care, smoking area, bonuses, severance, location and relocation, etc.
Take a good look at it and either come up with a formula to calculate a company's 'coolness' factor or just eyeball it and give each a score.
Now, and this is the critical part, throw it in the trash, remind yourself what your budget is, and have a good laugh. Maybe joke with your coworker about it, "I'm such a geek, I not only thought I could get a job with another company that's better than this one, I actually created a spreadsheet! HAH!" Then nervously look around to see if the boss was listening before going back to moving the mouse whenever you hear footsteps.
Seriously, though, the best jobs I've had were based solely on the supervisor I had. The only equations I can count on are:
Any project, bad boss --> painful work.
Any project, good boss --> enjoyable work.
The difference, I've found, is that a good boss stands back and lets me create. The act of creation is what's important to me. A good boss not only knows that there's several ways of accomplishing something, they won't step into the process and become the creative entity - they allow you to create and implement.
Of course, this won't apply if you are a soulless code monkey.
The best advice I can give after making sure the job meets your basic needs (stretches you a bit, is in an area you are familair with or would like to become familiar, meets financial, health, retirement, etc needs) is to interview directly with the person who will be surpervising you and then see if you can chat with 2-4 people who you'll be working with or who work for your possible boss.
Good luck!
-Adam
Figure out what your short and long term goals are and think about what career tracks are consistent with those. Then you can work on finding a company that can put you where you want to be in a year or 5 years, etc... (even if it isn't with the same company).
From my experience, people make a huge difference. So look for a company that hires the kind of people you would want to work with. Easier said than done, but talking to people who work there is usually a good start.
Having had six jobs since 1998. I'm fairly familar with the whole interview and job hunting process. Remember that while they are interviewing you, you are also interviewing them, ask them questions that are important to you at a job. Ask to talk to some of the people you will be working with, use sights like linkedin to find out if you know people who have worked there in the past. Ask a lot of questions, about process and procedures. I usually ask these questions (I'm a Java developer so they are slightly skewed) What is your typical release cycle? How do you test your code? What development tools will I be using? What is a typical week in terms of hours? Will I be on call?
Another thing I find important is to ask to see where you will be sitting, it may seem trivial, but if you see that you are going to be sitting in a small room with five other developers all using 13 inch monitors it will tell you a lot about a company.
was after I foundout who I was replacing. We had worked together about 10 months earlier at another employer. He called me later that night and told me why he was leaving and to tell me not to take that job.
The big thing is to get a feel for whether or not the company is even going to be ther elong term.
In 2000, I was sent to a site as a consultant. Within a few weeks it became really apparent how screwed up they were. I got out of there while I could control the exit. A year later, they laid off over 2000 people (which accounted for more than the entire rest of the IT staffs in the rest of the city). Three years later, adn the IT in the area still isn't back up to what it was.
...ask to see code. Actual production code, preferably. Have them show you some code they're proud of, and some code they're not too proud of. Take note of how well it's documented, if the variable names are well thought out, and if it shows signs of recent refactoring.
Figure out what you don't like about your current job. Then find out if the company your interviewing with behaves the same way. For example, you don't like constant supervision, does the company you're interviewing with have a more hands-off approach? Conversely, if you never get face time with your bosses now, will the other company give you good interaction with your boss(es).
The People/Culture Who am I going to be working with? What are they like? Do they have lives outside of work, or do they exist in some company-subsidized virtual reality? (I once interviewed at Dow Jones, and they told me in glowing terms of their company-sponsored sports and all that... thanks, but, um, I have a life, and it's not about a company.) Are they knowledgeable, clueful (yes, those two are different) and friendly? The Work What am I going to be doing? After almost 15 years of this stuff, I don't want totally trained-monkey work, but at the same time, I've served my time in the tech-support and sysadmin (and other) levels of hell, and like to have some time where I'm not "on call." The Business What does the organization do, and how does it do it? Does it do things, and do them in ways, that I can believe in, or at least support? Less than a decade ago, I was the webmaster for the majority of the casinos in Atlantic City, as well as several others across the country. It was "exciting" work, to be sure, but I had a hard time knowing that my salary was largely derived from the social security checks of blue-haired slot-stuffing (oh my, that sounds Freudian) grannies. On the flip side, I once worked for free for a year to fight spam. The Commute In the early days of the ISP industry, I once had a commute of 3.5 hours, each direction, to work at a helldesk. Since then, I've done much better, thank goodness. These days it's usually 5 or 10 minutes with decent scenery and ocean views, and it's unlikely that I'd ever go for an hour-each-way 5-days-a-week run like a lot of people have. The Pay How's the compensation package, overall? Is the wage or salary enough to pay my bills, save a bit, and get the occasional shiny! new toy? How are the benefits? Medical, dental and optical? 401(k)? Employer match? Profit-sharing? I've used these five criteria to evaluate potential new jobs relative to current ones, and in cases where I have multiple offers, to compare them. Usually, to get me to change jobs, the new one has to be significantly better than my current one in at least a couple categories, and can't be worse than it in any. In retrospect, I've still made some decisions that I now question, but I don't tend to find myself in jobs that suck in every possible way.
I am going to assume that youre not a money whore and that's not criteria #1, and that youre a techie type, not looking to become a CEO .
Some of the more subtle things, imho:
1.) Benefits/cost of benefits: Companies that offer "benefits" but have you shoulder the cost of 80% of them often reeks of a company that is just putting up appearances in all areas, and is generally cheap, or struggling.
2.) The kitchen, or perhaps lack thereof. Are there lots of pay vending machines, even for coffee, or worse, water? This again reeks of a company that doesnt really care a whole lot about their worker's happiness or isnt doing well enough to go to price club and buy a vat of coffee or chips.
3.) The office. Cube farms w/ managers in corner offices w/ the doors closed? Do the cubicles/whatever appear to be layed out in a way to encourage the flow of ideas, or just for managers to keep tabs on employees. Is it painted in flat white cost-cutting paint that has needed a fresh coat for the past 5 years? Im not saying look for wood paneled walls, but it should be easy to spot whether or not the office was designed to be a nice place where you would want to spend your time, or a factory line meant to spit out code. Check out the machines- do they have old 17 inch monitors on the fritz, or do most developers have nice 22" monitors w/ newish machines.
Are there signs posted about "procedures" and "reminders" to put waste paper in the proper receptacles and that office supplies are meant for in office use only, and that employees are not to take more than 10 minute coffee breaks, and to please be considerate and make sure your coffee mugs are cleaned and out of the sink before you leave at the end of the day... etc? Ive seen this... it reeks of low level managers and admins struggling to flex any muscle they have- any requests for favors or exceptions to policies will most likely get stonewalled by some bitter under appreciated admin. Excessive procedure reminders reeks of micro-managing types that will never let you make a decision.
4.) The general 'aura' of the office. Are there people grumbling in corner's or are people generally chipper and interested in what they're doing. Do people have "personality" items on their desk- IE pictures, nerf balls w/ the company logo on them, brain teaser puzzles (especially in a techie office) like rubik's cubes, etc, or do they appear to have a "I need to get back to work" look to them.
5.) Do they bring someone from the trenches in to speak to you alone and tell you how they like the company? This is usually a good sign. Do your coworkers and managers seem like good guys? I went from a company of very cool people, to a much better "job" where my coworkers are generally very lame and anti-social. I went from doing a close to weekly happy hour w/ my coworkers to close to zero social interaction both outside and inside the office. It sucks more than you may think, never really having more than general polite hows the kids conversations w/ your coworkers at lunch (or on the flip side, it can be a life changing experience to make good lifelong type friends w/ your coworkers).