How to Research a Company Before an Interview

"What do you know about our company?" is a question that catches people out more often than it should. The usual answer is a line from the homepage: "You're a leading provider of innovative solutions." The interviewer has heard that sentence many times, and it tells them you spent about two minutes on preparation.

Good research doesn't take days. An hour or two, done properly, is enough to answer that question well and, more importantly, to make your other answers more specific.

Start with what the company actually does

This sounds obvious, but many candidates can't explain it in plain words. Try to answer three questions in a sentence each:

• What do they sell or provide?
• Who pays them? Consumers, businesses, governments?
• How do they mostly make money? Products, services, subscriptions, outsourcing contracts?

If you can't explain it simply, keep reading until you can. For IT services companies, look at which industries their clients are in and which services they list. For product companies, try the product yourself if it's free or has a trial. Using an app for a week gives you more to talk about than reading about it.

Where to look

The company's own website. Skip the homepage slogans and go to the pages that carry real information: products or services, case studies, the "About" or history page, and the careers section. Case studies are especially useful because they show actual projects in specific industries.

The investor relations section. If the company is listed on a stock exchange, it publishes annual reports and quarterly results. You don't need to read the whole report. The chairman's or CEO's letter at the start usually summarises the year, the main business segments and future plans in a few pages. This is one of the most underused sources candidates have.

Recent news. Search the company's name in a news site and read the last few months of coverage. Look for acquisitions, new products, big contracts, leadership changes or layoffs. You don't have to bring all of this up, but you should know about anything major. Being surprised by a headline everyone else in the room knows about doesn't look good.

LinkedIn. Look at the company page and, if you know who's interviewing you, their profile too. Check what the team you're applying to has been posting about. Also look at people who recently joined in a similar role: what backgrounds do they have, and what skills do they list?

The job description. Read it again, slowly. Underline the skills and responsibilities mentioned more than once. Those are probably what the interviewers will focus on.

People who work or worked there. Seniors from your college, friends of friends, or alumni you can find on LinkedIn. A polite, short message asking for ten minutes of their time often works. Ask about the interview process and what the day-to-day work is like, not for a referral in the first message.

Be careful with interview experience posts and reviews

Candidate experience posts and employee reviews on various websites can help, but treat them with some caution. Interview processes change, sometimes every hiring season, and one person's experience may have been for a different role or location. Reviews also tend to come from people who were very happy or very unhappy. Use them to get a rough idea of the rounds and the kinds of questions, then confirm the details with the recruiter or your placement cell if you can.

What to write down

Keep your notes to one page. You're not writing a report, you're preparing for a conversation. Useful things to note:

• What the company does, in your own words, in two or three lines
• The business unit or team you'd join, and what it works on
• Two or three recent developments you found interesting
• Values or ways of working the company talks about, plus an example from your own life that fits one of them
• Two or three questions you'd genuinely like answered

How to use the research in the interview

The research isn't only for the "what do you know about us" question. Its real value is in connecting your experience to their work.

Compare these two answers to "Why do you want to join us?"

"I want to join because you're a big company with good growth opportunities."

"I noticed a lot of your recent case studies are in healthcare, and my final-year project was a patient appointment system. I'd like to keep working in that area, and your healthcare practice seems to be growing."

The second answer is short, specific and true for this company only. That's the goal.

Don't overdo it, though. Reciting revenue figures or the founding year doesn't impress anyone. Use one or two pieces of information where they fit naturally. And if you're not sure a fact is still current, don't state it confidently.

The questions you ask at the end

Near the end, most interviewers ask if you have any questions. "No, I think everything's covered" wastes a good opportunity. Your research should give you at least one real question, for example:

• "What would someone in this role spend most of their first three months working on?"
• "I read about the new [product or project]. Would this team be involved in it?"
• "What do people who do well in this team have in common?"

Avoid asking about salary, leave or work-from-home rules in the first technical round, unless the interviewer brings it up. Those questions are better for the HR discussion.

One or two hours of focused research won't guarantee an offer. But it will make you sound like someone who wants this particular job, not just any job, and interviewers notice the difference.