You’re a job seeker who needs info on a potential employer. Put on your trench coat and fedora. Got a fake mustache? Good. Now set up shop in a dingy office near Hell’s Kitchen. Whenever possible, walk down rain-slicked alleys with a camera in your hands and a sliver of hard-bitten cynicism in your heart.
OK, you don’t really need to be a detective to research companies (although who doesn’t love a good fake mustache?). If you’ve got access to a laptop and have a few hours on your hands, you can uncover key data about organizations. Let’s get started on these simple ways job seekers can use social media to evaluate potential employers.
In a perfect universe, you’d find all of the following information on a company’s LinkedIn page. As a hardboiled detective, you know it’s not a perfect universe. Not all organizations will have filled out a complete profile, but you should be able to find at least some of this data.
When you peruse an organization’s LinkedIn feed, you should ask two questions:
Under the about section, look at the company’s overview to determine its mission.
Below the overview, you should see a list of facts, such as the date the company was founded and whether it is private or public. If the company is public, it’s time to take your investigation to the next level. Because public companies “sell their stock on the market,” you can get more information about them, explains USF’s Career Center. “Public companies make available their annual reports and other documents required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the database EDGAR.”
“The people make up the organization,” explains Artemio Ramirez Jr., professor and assistant director of USF's Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications. To get a sense of the organization’s culture, learn as much as you can about its people.
Under the people section, you’ll find several easy-to-digest paragraphs:
After these data sets, you’ll see a list of employees at the company. Click on their profiles to learn more about each of them. Look for the following information:
Analyze the company’s social media posts. “If the company’s website shows foosball tables and a Slurpee machine, but you don’t see a single photo of them on Instagram, that could indicate employees are too busy to use them,” says this article on Fast Company. On the other hand, “selfies at after-hour outings suggest good office camaraderie.”
As you peruse a company’s profiles, ask yourself:
Detective bonus points: If the organization has a well-known brand, search for its hashtag on Twitter and see what comes up. What are employees and customers saying?
Step away from social media and dive even deeper.
Make an appointment with a reference librarian and let them know you’re seeking information about a potential employer. Your joint sleuthing should uncover documents that help you answer the following questions, suggested by USF’s Career Center:
Search respected publications such as The Wall Street Journal for news — from mergers to scandals — about the organization.
Look at company reviews on websites such as Glassdoor or Indeed.
If you live in the Tampa Bay area, you can also check the Tampa Bay Times’ “Tampa Bay’s Top 100 Workplaces” to see whether your prospective employer made the list.
If you don’t know the average salary for the position, you won’t be able to properly evaluate an offer. You can learn the median wage through these websites:
After all this research, you may still have a list of questions. Time to schedule an informational interview. Reach out to an employee at the company “to grab some coffee and chat about their experiences,” suggests this NBC News article.
If you’re not sure how to network with employees at the company, you may benefit from reading our post on the topic: “How to Grow Your Professional Social Network (Without Being Annoying)”.
We’re always here to answer your questions about advancing your career. Contact us through our website or give us a call at 813-974-0950.