Start with a plan, not LinkedIn Jobs — Company (2/3)
"Casting a wider net" might hurt your chances as an early career jobseeker or career changer.
This is part 2 of a three part series on starting your job search. Missed part 1? Read it here.
Now that you understand your profile, start picturing where you’d like to work.
You might ask, I can’t be selective at this stage, I don’t want to miss out on any opportunities, why shouldn’t I apply to every job I see??
One thing that companies look for in the application process is motivation. Why did you apply to us specifically and why do you want to contribute to our vision in the long run? Companies believe that if a candidate is highly motivated to work on the same vision, this person is more likely to take initiatives, learn things they didn’t know before, and therefore could be a more productive team member.
If you apply to 100 random companies that have little in common, recruiters can tell from your application that their company is one of them. Starting narrow will allow you to be more intentional, spend more time researching the company, potentially connect with current employees and thus increasing your chances.
More importantly, company you’ll eventually work for will be an important part of your life for the next 1-2 years. Why shouldn’t you have higher standards for your next career step?
Ask your self these questions: Do I want to work in a relatively small, close-knit environment where I’ll get to have more impact and visibility? Or do I want to be in a larger organization with more resources and a clear structure of doing things? Do I prefer having more autonomy and freedom, or do I want to have more guidance and a knowledge base? Do I want to have the chance to explore other fields outside of my function, or do I want to dive as deep as I can on a specific area of my field?
Now, let’s structure these thoughts and see how we can find these information.
The Company
There are two elements in your ideal company: the position and the organization.
The Position
Pretty straightforward — what will you do? Note that different companies can use the same title for positions that have slightly different responsibilities, and for the same responsibilities different companies could use different titles. A Product Manager at Amazon could be called a Program Manager at Microsoft. If you are a product manager applying to Microsoft, perhaps add “Program Manager” to your CV to match their language.
You can also get an idea of this position’s responsibilities by checking which the team(s) that the position will be working in(with). I hired for an entry-level data analysts that required solid skills in SQL and data visualization tools like Tableau. We received lots of applications from people that were technically very capable. But the challenge began when they started interviewing with us — most struggled to communicate clearly. This was a major problem because the role needs to create reports for the publishers, who are external stakeholders that don’t have in-depth data knowledge and needed someone who can produce data insights that were easy to digest.
For those who want to step into a new position in a tech company, Will Lawrence, Product Manager at Facebook, wrote an explanatory newsletter piece on what each position in a product organization does and how they interact with each other. This also gives you a good idea which company size would suit you better.
The Organization
How the organization works is usually tied to the stage of the business, and you should take this into account when you are planning for your job search because this will affect their expectations for someone working in your position. When I hired machine learning engineers for an early stage startup with 15 employees, I interviewed a candidate who I thought was perfect for the role. He passed all interview stages and was having a final conversation with the cofounders. However, when the candidate said he couldn’t deal with deadlines and was not good with stress, the cofounders had to reject him. This person was supposed to be the first machine learning engineer in a very early stage startup where things needed to move fast and could change very quickly. The candidate was a great engineer, just not a fit for the type of organization and position at that stage.
Company stages can be determined by their size and funding round (if they are venture capital backed). If they just raised their seed round investment, they are probably hiring for the 1st team member in each function, therefore need someone who’s ready to start working independently and will less likely hire juniors. They also won’t have capacity to teach someone early in their career. If they raised a Series A, Series B, this is a good time to scout for their junior positions while still remain in an agile, close-knit environment. Companies at this stage could have about 50 to a few hundred people.
Besides LinkedIn, here are a few good resources to research your ideal organizations:
The Org, where you’ll get to read the organizational charts which are typically not public;
TechCrunch, where you can read about startup news and funding updates (although it covers global news, info on startups in your region might be limited);
underpin, a newsletter by Jill Wohlner, tech recruiter and entrepreneur, that creates company profiles on larger tech companies;
Sifted, a Financial Times backed media company and one of my favorite sources for European startup and tech news.
Now that you have a clearer idea of the companies you want to target, let’s put them down into three groups.
Tier 1 companies are a handful of companies that are the most ideal for you. They match 90% (up to you what that means and this is not an exact science) of what you’re looking for. Spend the next 2 weeks only on them and do everything you can to understand them and connect with current employees.
Tier 2 companies are probably 10 companies that are less ideal but still match most of your needs well. If you realize after 2 weeks there aren’t enough action for your Tier 1 companies, start moving to your Tier 2 companies and spend say 3-4 weeks on those.
Tier 3 companies are a larger number of companies that match some of your needs and could still be good places for you to work. Similarly, move onto them when Tier 1 or 2 don’t work out as planned.
In the next and final issue of this series, we’ll tie your profile and your ideal companies together by laying out the best ways to approach companies (yes, direct application is not the only way). Missed the profile part? Check it out here.