This is “Step 3: Conduct In-Depth Research”, chapter 6 from the book Job Searching in Six Steps (v. 1.0). For details on it (including licensing), click here.
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Figure 6.1 The Six-Step Job Search Process: Step 3
What Do We Mean by Conduct In-Depth Research?
At this point in your search, you have done the following two steps:
This chapter covers what you are looking for when you research.
You might be tempted to take your marketing campaign public—broadly distributing your résumé, posting it on job boards, and sharing it with everyone you know. You definitely need to put yourself out there via networking and interviewing in order to get a job. However, networking and interviewing is step 4. Before you go out on the market in front of people as a legitimate job contender, you need to complete step 3, conduct in-depth research.
Every time you put yourself in front of someone, it is a potential job interview situation. You don’t know whom people know or if they may know of a job opening. So you want to make the best impression whenever you speak to anyone. If you use face-to-face interaction for your research, you risk coming across as a novice to someone who can really help you. On the other hand, if you take time to do some secondary researchResearch from printed or published sources. This is different from primary research where you are actually speaking with people firsthand or collecting the data yourself. beforehand, you demonstrate knowledge of the job, organization, or industry, and you can use the personal interaction to research above and beyond what you can find in published material. Therefore, research must precede networking of any kind.
Research is often undervalued in the job search. Recruiters often complain that candidates come into interviews with little knowledge of the position, organization, and industry for which they are interviewing. Are you guilty of too little research?
According to Holly White, HR manager for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “I am impressed by a candidate that intimately knows the organization, the current focus/strategy and is able to engage the interview panel in a thoughtful discussion about issues and opportunities.”Author interviewed Holly White directly for a post she did on her website: http://www.sixfigurestart.com/recruiter-interview/recruiter-interview-holly-white-unicef
Table 6.1 Things to Know about Your Target Job, Organization, and Industry
Job | Organization | Industry |
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This chapter includes how to conduct in-depth research. Yes, it includes reviewing the job description and organization website. Yes, interviews are a source of information. But as you can see from Table 6.1 "Things to Know about Your Target Job, Organization, and Industry", you need more information than is likely to be found in just the posting and the website. There are many other additional resources to consult:
This chapter details why in-depth research is critical to your job search:
Finally, this chapter talks about informational interviewsA meeting set up with the purpose of gathering information or exploring a topic.. Informational interviews are meetings where you are the interviewer, and the person with whom you are meeting has information that you want—for example, about a specific job, organization, or industry. Informational interviews are a type of networking, but since the primary aim is to uncover information, we are including informational interviewing in the research chapter.
Informational interviews are a bridge between steps 3 and 4 because they enable you to test your research from step 3 before you more broadly go out into the market as a job seeker in Step 4, Networking and Interviewing. Many job seekers treat informational interviews like an interrogation, with a long list of questions to extract information from the interviewee. In this chapter, we take a more sophisticated approach to informational interviews. These interviews occur after some research is already completed, so the interview is not simply a series of questions to gain more information but rather a way to verify, refine, and test the information already researched. It is a two-way conversation, and you will be giving as well as receiving information.