Now I love a bit of Charles and Eddie (throwback/showing age) but how can you tell, especially in an interview situation if someone is telling you the complete story?
We all know that the current skills shortage, especially around the SDLC, has dramatically increased the number of roles available and this has of course increased the need for interviews to be more successful but is everything as it seems. Whilst the vast majority of company’s are of course completely transparent throughout the process there are some examples of people being offered a dream that hasn’t been realised yet or in some cases will never be.
One of the things I have noticed is we have seen an increase in people leaving roles after short periods and the main reason is “it wasn’t anything like the role I was told in the interview”. Now of course I am not saying this is the case across all business and of course projects and personal change but how can you make sure the role you have been sold is the Utopia you have been promised.
The answer is simple research with LinkedIn being a great resource for this. You can simply click on the company page and have a look at who is working there, what their history is and in a lot of cases what they are doing. It should give you an insight into the type of people they employ, what skills they are using and what they are doing.
You can also use LinkedIn to see who have recently worked there, you may be able to see how long people have stayed, where those people have gone and also what skills they acquired whilst working there. This of course isn’t an exact science of course, as the information is reliant on accurate and constant updates of peoples information, but it could give you an overview for example if you see a lot of people have left recently it might be worth asking the question of why that is.
Also look at businesses own blogs and social media, this again will give you a good insight to the type of company they are, typically a business will have a social media “voice” which can give you an idea of company culture, corporate, relaxed, nerf guns etc.
These are only a few examples, finding information has never been easier, and making the important decision on your next job role is definitely worth a little investigation and will usually bring a positive response, so make time to make sure you have all of the information.
Blog written by Gill Twist of Twist IT Recruitment.
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