Rachel Levy: Social Media & Marketing

Note: This is a version of a post I made on the Wall Street Journal online blog on June 17, 2009.

A few months, I was asked a question by a potential employer that I couldn’t answer “What do you think of what we are doing in social media?” I couldn’t answer it not because I didn’t know what he meant, but rather, that I hadn’t actually looked it up. Although social media is the area of marketing I am most interested in, I was still stuck in my old ways of researching a company… by looking at their website.

Doing thorough research of a company is one of the most important steps in preparing for an interview. Not that they will necessarily ask you the direct question that I got asked, but because it gives you the opportunity to bring up what you have researched, or just have a better understanding of how the company operates. Realizing this, put me into action to change the way I now research companies.

Here’s what I do now.

• I search for the company’s fan page on Facebook. I look what they have posted, and what their fans are posting about them. I do the same for YouTube.
• I find their corporate account on Twitter, and again, see what they are tweeting about. I also search on an application called Twellow, to find employees of the company, and see what they are writing about.
• I find their company profile on LinkedIn, and look up the profiles of some of the people I might be working with or key executives, and definitely the people I will be interviewing with. I find at least one item about a person that I have in common with them, so I can bring it up in the interview somehow.
• I do quick searches for the company and key people on Hoovers and Zoominfo. Other good websites include: Vault, Glassdoor, Lexis Nexis, Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance. Of course, there’s a good old search engine on the company’s name, or coupled with key words such as “good” or “bad.” Through looking at these sites, I also try to understand who the company’s major competitors are.
• Of course, I still look at the company’s website, and at a minimum, read the About Us section, the press section, and overall what the company has been doing. If they have a blog, I read the first few posts.

Spending the time doing this extensive research has really helped me better understand the mindset of the people and the company I’m interviewing with. Yesterday, I was asked in the interview what I thought of a company’s website, and I could give a very thorough analysis.

What do you think?  What are your preferred methods of researching a company prior to an interview?