TJ Walker (YouTube, Jan 2, 2024) gives concise, practical advice on how to prepare for job interviews and client pitches by researching a target company across multiple sources: the company website, news coverage, social media profiles, broader Google searches for recent issues (last six months), and—distinctively—speaking directly with the company’s actual clients to gather nuanced feedback.
You're going on a job interview or a client pitch with a new corporation, what sort of preparation do you really need to do in order to be completely confident that you're well versed in talking to them about them? The first one is obvious. You need to go to their website, look at what they are saying about themselves. That's easy, you already knew that. The second thing you need to do is click on news about company, go to Google, click the button for news, see where they are in news, what's being said about them by the news media, by people who are objective. The third thing you need to do is check out all the social media handles profiles for this corporation, see what they are putting out to the rest of the world. Those you may have already thought of. But the next thing you need to do is a general Google search for anything that has shown up about this company in the last six months. Maybe there are bloggers out there, maybe there are other complaints, maybe there are legal challenges against them. You need to be aware of that. That's the fourth one. But the fifth option is one you might not be doing and that is you need to find out on LinkedIn or some other place, actual clients of this company and talk to them. Talk to them about what they like, what they don't like about this company. If you can bring that level of nuance into your conversation when you are applying for a job or you're pitching this company as a client, you will stand out head and shoulders above the competition.
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