I was reading an article the other day about a man who became so despondent about company values that he decided to start up his own business and live instead according to the things that mattered to him. This put me in mind of a friend of mine who used to work for an organization which claimed to serve the criminal justice system but actually turned out to be more about profit and greed. It was only as my friend climbed up through the ranks and began to work more closely with the company directors and CEO that she discovered the true nature of the their priorities, ones which she personally considered to directly contradict the company’s mission statement.
Although I always advise that any jobseeker does his or her homework before applying to particular companies or organizations for work, a company’s true values and cultures can often be hard to get to grips with until after you’ve already accepted the position. Unfortunately for some, this means that what you read in terms of the company’s mission, vision and values on their website isn’t necessarily borne out by reality and, in certain cases, employees have been known to keep changing employers endlessly in search of one that fits.
Any research that you do up front will, of course, never be wasted and often what those outside your target company have to say can be more revealing than what the organization has to say about itself. The views of ex-employees, which can sometimes be found on online discussion forums for example, can be quite telling, as can customer reviews and reports from competitors. Carrying out an informational interview can also help to give a better insight into how a company really operates and this is well worthwhile when you bear in mind that, at a formal job interview, the opinions you are likely to hear are the ones which ‘toe the party line’.
The preparation that you do in advance of a formal interview is, however, vital in this regard and you would be well-advised to think about the questions that you want to ask the interviewer. Having looked at the company’s mission, vision and values, try to think of questions which will really get to the root of whether the organization lives up to them.
Of course, the decision to start your own business as a means of ensuring that you can live by your own values and not somebody else’s may be seen by some as extreme, but it certainly offers a cast-iron guarantee.
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