How to find the “right” company to apply to?
What would you recommend in looking for the "right" company to apply at?
Justine: Fit is everything. Fit with culture. Fit with boss. Fit with expectations. Fit with your current future.
Immediately after reading this post, I recommend you sit down and have a serious and realistic think about your life and immediate future. Think about the following:
What are you comfortable with
What are you interested in
What are your non-negotiables for your future, and
What do you never want to do again
After doing that, you’ll have a realistic self-assessment about what is important to you. Then don’t apply anywhere (or take a job anywhere) that conflicts with anything in that list. Because that list comprises of your core values. And going against your list will set yourself up for frustration.
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But what if you have no idea about anything at all in life. What if you don’t know what you like or dislike, you don’t know what you can live with and what you can’t stand? Then you’re in the same boat as me for most of my college life. I didn’t really decide on an ~end goal~ until the last possible moment because honestly, I have no idea what I want to do. [2019 Update: To this day, I still don’t know what I want to do but I’m having a blast figuring it out.]
So this is my suggestion for those lost like me.
I vote you apply everywhere now as an intern, and figure out what you don’t want or can’t stand along the way. Sort of like finding a significant other for the rest of your life. You need to know what are your non-negotiables and your compromises early on. Don’t waste your time in the long run with someone (or in this case, somewhere) you’re not growing with.
The only way, for me, to figure all this out though is through introspection and experience, which comes with being adventurous enough to try anything once. This is how I realized how much I hate irresponsible startups and also, very small startups, primarily because of how work is assigned there. But again, that’s a post for another day.
To help guide you in making your own core values list, I wrote down my “right” and “wrong” signs I’m looking for when interviewing with companies. Reminder that these are my personal views and opinions, not what should be the norm for all of you, dear readers! We’re not the same person after all.
[2019 Update: Reminder as well that I wrote this after interning at 3 different places, and listening to people talk about their internships too. Some of this came from personal experience but some came from asking questions of others whose opinion I valued. Don’t feel like you have to do everything on your own, use others’ work to help you!]
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I want to work for a multinational company with a great reputation.
I flip flop a lot between the idea of starting my own business or working for a MNC, but the MNC always wins out because of the international possibilities. Being at a MNC gives me that possibility. I get to travel, I get to work somewhere cool, my parents get to brag about me, and I can take them out to eat without it breaking the bank.
My ultimate goal though is that I’m hoping to work abroad (and make money in $$), so it’s important to me (and my career plan) that future employers and possibly MBA schools have some sort of context where I worked. The name recognition will be useful for that goal.
I want to be surrounded by high performers.
You know when you work on a project and your group mates suck and contribute nothing? I’ve been on both sides of that equation. Early on in college, I was the slacker who doesn’t do anything and expects the micromanager to do it all for us. Then in the final years of college, I became the micromanager who can’t trust my group mates to get it done. It was tiring as hell, and I sent apology messages to my micromanaging groupmates after. Now imagine being a micromanager for the rest of your career. Thanks, but no thanks.
I need to be able to trust that the people I work with can handle their part of the projects while I handle my share of the workload. This need also manifests in me trusting my coworkers to be both my friend and my competition. Even right now, I choose to constantly surround myself with high performing people because they make me better.
If they’re doing well, I have to do well too. (I’m unfortunately an easy prey for peer pressure.) I want to be pushed to be better than who I am today constantly and consistently. So if I’m surrounded by people who whine, complain, and do nothing, then I’ll think it’s ok to whine, complain, and do nothing too. Which would be terrible for my future self.
As early as high school or college, this is my #1 tip for improving your future self and career. Excellent people are well-connected enough to know what to apply for, they’re the ones who self-study interesting topics and books, and are usually doing cool things with their time. It’s hard not to be a high performer when everyone around you is one. Especially if you succumb to peer pressure as easily as me.
Also, excellent people will understand why you work so hard. They are a fantastic support system. They know when you want advice and when you want a sympathetic ear. Something most people don’t realize. Go excellent people!
I want to work in a company that is results-oriented.
Some companies rate performance so subjectively that it turns into a popularity contest. Numbers don’t lie but emotions always do.
I get all my work done between 6-9am. I study best during those hours, I work on my part in projects then, and I know I absorb and process information into knowledge faster. Nothing is cluttering up my mind at 6-9am. There are no deadlines, no people online, nothing that can bother me from the sacred act of reading while sipping on apple juice. (I’m usually on a train headed to work or school at this time as well.) [2019 Update: This is insane, but I still do that with apple juice to this day.]
After 9am, my productivity level continuously falls until 5pm. (That’s the time I usually go home, and so I start reading again since the train lines are so long.) Between 9-5, it looks like I’m doing nothing, ergo, I need my company to trust that I’m a productive member of their society, and that I’m doing it on my own terms. I need them to rate me based on the results I give, and not based on the workplace politicization.
This is another reason why I hate org culture. It’s a question of who has spent the most time in the org room, and on the most number of projects. Not, who has made a deep impact on how the org does things.
I hate when people say “This is how it’s always been done.” as an answer.
If there is a policy in place, and nobody can explain to me, why that policy is in place, only ‘that’s just the way it is’, then I’m immediately worried because it also means that nobody around me bothered questioning the system. Or worse, they tried and failed against the Great Red Tape Wall.
This applies to a lot of offices, particularly in government as well. When your reason for not changing to a more effective or efficient way to run things is habit, you’re alienating a lot of young people who live a rushed everyday life. We’re wasting time with processes whose worth you cannot prove to the people questioning it. Why??? What are we all gaining from this???
I don’t mind time-consuming processes, so long as you can explain why we have to do things this way. Like banks vetting checks for security purposes. That I get. I don’t want someone to submit a fake check and withdraw money instantaneously from my bank accounts. But unnecessary processes are a pain I’d rather save myself from.
I want to be able to talk to my bosses and feel heard.
I shouldn’t be scared of approaching the people I work for and raising valid points. Companies that have a super strict hierarchy are usually the ones where your bosses ignore you unless they need you to do something - especially if you’re young. I hate that. I’m not an idiot, because if I was, you wouldn’t have hired me. So trust me to give accurate information and valid suggestions and not waste your time.
It’s too easy to feel demoralized when your opinions aren’t being heard and acknowledged, especially as an intern. In most places, intern means free manual labor, not productive contributor to our society. Think about what meaning you want to add and if there’s an avenue for you to do so in that environment before fully committing there.
I hate hands-off supervisors, especially if you’re interning in their department.
It defeats the purpose of having an intern; I’m here to learn about what you do and how you do it on the basis that I could one day actually work for you. If you’re not going to train me in the core values, work, and tenets of your department, why am I even here?? Because of this, I was paid to sit around all day at one of my internships wherein I finished a book a day since I was so bored.
Your direct manager is the most important person you will interact with at your job. S/he usually determines whether you’ll want to stay or not. So, don’t ever think you’re completely at fault if your direct manager makes you feel unhappy in the position. Ineffective direct managers are the bane of HR’s struggling to keep talented people in the company.
People don’t quit their companies; they quit their bosses after all.
On the reverse side, if you have a truly fantastic boss, you’ll be inspired to do and be your best. But sometimes you have to vocalize that you want to do more. Make sure you’ve exhausted every avenue of trying to pick up projects before writing off this internship as a bust. Sometimes your boss is just too busy to give you more than 5 minutes of thought. But usually, 5 minutes is more than enough.
I want to work somewhere that is flexible with time. I hate bundy clock mindset.
Bundy clock mindset is the practice of making sure you time in and time out and fill your requisite hours at work. If you’re not there by 8am, deduction. You take too long out for lunch, deduction. You clock out at exactly 5:01pm while your coworkers do so at 8pm, you’re first in line out the door, no matter your performance. It’s aggravating.
I vehemently hate this outdated way of working. Especially in a country like the Philippines with truly terrible traffic. If I leave the office just 15 minutes earlier, I save myself an hour worth of traffic on the road. Also, 80% of what I do can be done online, so as long as I deliver results and show up to meetings, leaving the office slightly early shouldn’t be a problem!!
Also also, bundy clock mindset reflects an industrial factory workplace because this policy came from the industrial revolution, where people had to time in and time out to prove they were on the factory floor. A place where people were simply a cog in the machine, and not an engaged and productive member of society. Food for thought.
I hate companies who don’t trust their people.
When you feel the need to watch over your people 24/7, you’re not trusting them. When you don’t let them make decisions, you’re not trusting them. When you want to know what they’re doing and where they are all the time during office hours, not only are you not trusting them, YOU ARE BEING CREEPY.
If my own father doesn’t check what I’m doing the moment I leave the house, why should my employer? I’m very against Big Brother-like surveillance because it puts me on edge. How can I do my best work if I’m constantly having it double checked? Even in college, I wasn’t that observed.
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Clearly a lot of what I want are reactions to things that I don’t want to see in my future employer based on personal experience. But having a list of non-negotiables is great! It saves you so much time and misery since you already know what makes you miserable and you can actively avoid it.
Words of warning: Knowing what you want and advocating for it can be taken as entitlement. I think it’s good to have a healthy sense of what you can ask for in good faith. It’s good to be able to stand up for your opinion and voice it out. Because if you don’t believe that you have what it takes to be whatever it is you dream of, be it a CEO or a top researcher, nobody else will believe it either.
Just be aware that you have to put in the work. A lot of people like to fixate on the dreams part and forget that to get all the great things they want involves work. Don’t be that brat. Advocate for yourself and your dreams but put in the work to back it up.
I believe in you. Good luck~
[2019 Update: So this is pretty robust. I don’t really have much to add. It’s nice to see that in 2016 I had a lot of great thoughts already. I’d say this list hasn’t really changed so much as be enhanced with my current knowledge. Either way, it’s a great guide for those who are just starting out in their careers.]