Company Selection for Fresh Grads

It can be a rather troubling experience selecting a company to work for, especially when you start asking a lot of people about which is the best. This is because everyone is usually judging from their limited experience with the limited amount of companies they interacted with, and what they heard from friends working at those companies. Since companies are essentially places where people feel they belong so they tend to be a little… passionate and defensive of their companies and so sometimes the people you asked for advice, end up engaging in a flame war and you end up more confused than ever. So my first advice is do not publicly ask people which company is the best.

So how does one judge companies? Well it requires research on one’s own behalf, This involves looking at the company from different perspectives and taking into account several factors. I am listing some of these below:

The Problem Set #

Each company is essentially a Problem Solver of sorts. They find a bunch of problems that they feel people have, and then they come up with solutions to those problems and sell them to those people. So one excellent way to judge a company as a potential employer is to look at the Problem Set they are dealing with. This can be usually analyzed by visiting the company’s website and looking at what they listed under “Services” or “Solutions”. You can also see what verticals they are working on. A vertical is basically a certain segment of the industry, or an industry itself. So if you are interested in, let’s say, Health Care services, you can see if the company caters to that vertical. If the company develops its own products, you can always take a look at what those are and see if any of those fascinate you. Though what I normally do is after an interview, ask the interviewer if there are any ongoing projects, or are any products in active development, or do they simply just sell and provide support? This way you’d have a better idea of what you’re signing up for.

The Leadership #

Companies don’t usually list all of their employees on their website (we can still find that out, but we’ll get to that later), but what they usually do is provide detailed profiles of their Top Management. A company is like a ship, so it pays to know who’s at the helm. It gives you an idea of what the company is like, and where it might be headed. I won’t say that young people are bad/good, or old people are bad/good, but it all depends on what YOU are looking for. If you are in search for a company that is innovative and aspires to detach itself from the status quo and do things that haven’t been done before, then perhaps what you need are young talented people who are motivated by a common vision. In contrast, if you are in the market for a long-surviving stable company then what you need is an experienced captain who has proven his metal over and over again.

Sometimes you may come across a big stable company with a few relatively young people in its top management and this is usually a good sign. It means that they allow talented people to grow in their career and even reach the top tier.

The History #

This is another of those things that you can easily judge from a company’s website. You should learn how long a company has been around, because usually old companies are established companies, and established companies are usually stable companies. This shouldn’t be the only thing you should be noting in their history section though, you should also compare the age of the company with how much it has grown. You can then compare it with other old companies in the space and see how it ranks. Few other things you should look into from this section are:

• How was it created?
• Did it have a head start? (As in was it formed by merger of big companies)
• Was it created from the ground up? (means you should respect growth more?)
• How did it grow this big? Is that model still sustainable? If not, how are they growing now? Or are they at a stand still?
• Are the founding members still with the company? What roles are they playing? If not, why aren’t they?

You can even try looking up other sources on the company if you feel the information on the company website is insufficient

The Clientele #

The last item on our list of “Things you can learn from the company website” is the list of clients, but I’d advise you take this with a pinch of salt. Seeing a big name on the list doesn’t exactly tell you how much are they dealing with that client. Sometimes the name actually refers to just the local franchise of the global name (that’s not necessarily a bad thing though) so be careful how much you get impressed by this list. That said, the client list is a good indicator of how the company is doing and what kind of people it is catering to.

The Employees #

Now once we have gathered all the intel we can from the company website, time to tap into other sources. Thanks to a certain technological advancement called LinkedIn we can query a list of employees of any company (though it might require you to have some connections to them). If you do get that list, you can take a look at the talent pool of that company and judge if these are the kind of people that you would enjoy working with. If you manage to find employees that you know, then you can have one-to-one discussions with them about the company. Now the important thing to note is that these one-to-one discussions are fundamentally different than asking about the company publicly. It becomes a matter of pride in public and people don’t behave rationally. So in these individual discussions, you can probe your contact for information about the company, such as:

• What are they working on?
• What is the work environment like?
• What practices are being followed?
• What rules (if any) are being enforced there?
• How do people in different roles interact with each other?
• What is the career progression like?

Or any other question you can think of. You might be able to probe them for any unsavory details about the company too, since its private.

Rock Paper Scissors #

At the end of your search the one thing to keep in mind is that there is no absolute best. Scissors may beat Paper but is vulnerable to Rock, who in turn is vulnerable to Paper. Similarly some companies would be better than others in some aspects but may lack in other aspects. It all comes down to your personal preferences and what you are looking for.

So once you have all the info on all of your potential employers, rank them based on a set of criteria that is important to you. Again, this isn’t a universal ranking and may not make sense to other people. The important thing is that it must make sense to you. After all, the decision is a very personal one that, above all, affects your daily life for a long time to come. So make an informed decision, but make sure you are sufficiently informed.