What You Need to Know About Business

Asking Questions -- An Essential and Overlooked Step

Other articles:
Putting a Spin on Work Experience

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[Chapter 6: continued from here] ...Don't expect that you can just whip down to the library for half an hour and come away with an article published two weeks ago in some obscure magazine outlining all the work-related problems the person who's going to interview you is having.

The business climate of the 1990s has encouraged the proliferation of small businesses serving niche markets and the creation of small autonomous units within large corporations. There are thousands of businesses in cities of even modest size, and most of them have never had much if anything written about them.

But you'll never know what's been published on the company that's interviewing you until you check, so a trip to the library is always worthwhile if you have time. Knowing something about the company and what they do will help you to seem less like someone who's just looking for a job and more like a person who wants to contribute. It helps give credibility to your implicit claim that they'd be better off with you on their team.

You may only be approaching the company because they've got a job available that probably pays pretty well that you think you can do, but this isn't how to present yourself. You want to be seen as a problem solver instead of a paycheque casher, and to do that you need to have some idea of the problems the company has that you can help solve.

Many interviewers will come right out and ask you "What do you know about our company?" and you won't score too many points if the best you can do is "Nothing, really, I just saw your ad."

Even if you aren't asked, you can show some enthusiasm by saying what you like about the company and what they do. Besides, you'll want to know something about the organization to determine if that's really where you want to work.