When Brenda Champion was offered a
senior strategist position in the London office of Viant, a
Boston-based technology consultancy, she was so taken by the
founder's personality, enthusiasm and commitment that she eagerly
accepted his offer.
But soon after starting work, she discovered a serious rift
between the company's founder and its CEO. "Within a year, this man
I had great faith in left because of his conflict with the CEO,"
said Champion, who no longer works at Viant.
Champion learned a tough but important lesson: Never take a job
without doing sufficient due diligence. Thorough research may not
have predicted the founder's departure, but it may have revealed
fissures in the company's leadership team.
Doing due diligence before taking a new job is common. But what
does it really mean and how do you do it?
Most people think of due diligence as investigating the company's
viability and verifying the proposed compensation, said Patti
Wilson, principal and founder of The Career Company in Silicon
Valley. But that's just the beginning, Wilson said.
Conducting effective due diligence calls for more serious
corporate snooping: What are the personalities and management
philosophy of the company's leaders and managers? What is the
corporate culture? Have former employees of the job moved on to
greater glory within the company or in the industry?
"These things have greater ramifications and more of an impact on
your ability to do well while you're there," Wilson said.
Evaluate the whole management team, not just one executive or, as
Champion learned, you'll find yourself adrift when that executive
makes an unexpected departure. "Ask yourself 'what is my
survivability and potential for success in the organization as a
whole?' not simply with this specific boss or this specific group,"
advised Wilson.
Due diligence should begin before you apply for the job.
Researching the companies thoroughly will not only prevent you from
applying for the wrong jobs, but also prepare you for interviews
with the right ones.
Start by reading the company's SEC filings (available by company
name at http://www.sec.gov/) and annual
reports of the past several years. Read the company's marketing
brochures and look at its website, particularly the pages devoted to
investor relations. How does the company portray itself? Compare the
materials with those of competitors. Read the general press and the
trade press about the company, its leaders and the industry.
If you're working with a search firm or consultant, you may have
access to paid subscriber sites like http://www.onesource.com/,
which offers detailed business information on more than one million
public and private companies. Free industry research and gossip is
available at http://www.vault.com/ and http://www.wetfeet.com/. Chat
boards on specific companies can reveal useful information, but keep
in mind that you don't know the real motivation behind the postings.
Talk to as many knowledgeable people as possible, both inside and
outside the company. What is the company's reputation in the
industry? What do customers and vendors say? What's the word on the
street? Find former employees—perhaps using contacts in trade
associations and alumni groups—and find out why they left and what
the working environment was like.
Job-seekers working with recruiters should expect to be provided
with detailed information about the company, the corporate culture
and the specific job, as well as contacts for former employees, said
Carolyn Eadie, a partner with Spencer Stuart in London. "We want the
right people to be in the right jobs," she said. "If I see someone I
know well heading in the wrong direction, I need to help them find
the right people to give them more information to make a decision."
If your headhunter doesn't have those contacts, you might consider
contacting another one. Eadie said she often gets such calls and
doesn't hesitate to help when she can. She also suggests making a
list of six people from throughout your career—such as former
employers, colleagues, your banker or lawyer—whose business judgment
you respect and discussing the job with them. In many cases, you'll
not only get valuable advice, but learn of even more opportunities,
some of which may be better for you than the job you were originally
considering, Eadie said.
Discussions with former employees saved Gayatri Bhalla from
making an unwise career move. While a student at Yale School of
Management, Bhalla spent a summer working for a luxury retail firm
in a job that she loved. When the company offered her a permanent
position, she was thrilled.
But after talking to former employees, Bhalla learned that the
company was not as well perceived in the industry as she had
thought, and that its training program was considered inferior. "The
brand name translated well for the customer, but not for the person
working there," said Bhalla, who declined the offer.
One of the trickiest aspects of due diligence is assessing what
you're told by the potential employer, particularly if the offer has
been made and the firm is wooing you. When Bhalla graduated from
business school and was entertaining offers from several management
consulting firms, she quickly learned that "what you see is their
Sunday best, not necessarily the Monday through Friday wardrobe."
Getting the real story requires making careful observations,
talking to people throughout the company and asking targeted
questions. And even then, it's easy to be misled. When Bhalla was
evaluating her offers, she was expecting a child. Determined to work
at a family-friendly firm, she discussed work-life balance at each
firm and asked to meet with working mothers at the companies. The
firm she liked best was too new to have former employees to talk
with, but Bhalla was so impressed by the firm's professed commitment
to work-life balance that she took the job anyway.
Within two weeks, however, the 45-hour week she had been promised
turned into an 80-hour week, a schedule that would last for two
years, until she left the company. She also worked two weekends a
month.
"It was not at all the culture I had been sold," said Bhalla, now
vice-president/director for marketing at Digitas in Boston. "The
problem was the people I had spoken with were very senior. They had
the best intentions, but they were not the day-to-day managers. They
didn't realize what it took to execute the projects."
To find out a boss's true management style, not only do you need
to talk to the right people, but you need to ask the right
questions.
"If you ask 'what's your management style?' you'll get an answer
like, "I believe in empowering people' said Priscilla Claman,
president of Career Strategies, Inc. in Boston. "But if you ask 'how
did you get a project started, or how did you keep track of what
stage it was at?' you will get a story with which you can more
accurately evaluate what that individual and organization is like."
Observe how people interact and how they speak, not just what
they say, Claman suggested. "Does the potential boss refer to
another human being in the interview or just say "I, I, I," she
said.
One of the most effective questions is "when was my predecessor
promoted?" said Marilyn Moats Kennedy, founder of Career Strategies,
an Illinois-based consulting firm.
"Sometimes the job is a hot box; maybe they've had seven people
in it and no one could do it," she explained. "That means the job
isn't right."
And by asking "what qualities other than skills and experience
are you looking for?" you will get a mental stereotype of what the
potential boss wants, Kennedy said. "You can either sell to this
stereotype or do further questioning," she said. "If the mental
stereotype is a hundred percent different from you, you really don't
want to be there."
Doing due diligence also means being observant enough to pick up
on unspoken messages. Claman recalls being given a tour of one firm
where the best views were reserved for the large cafeteria, which
had small areas for groups to gather. "The person giving the tour
said, 'this cafeteria is really important because it shows what our
company is like,'" she said.
But the real key to making due diligence work for you is to be in
a position to be able to heed the warnings when they come in. That
means planning your job search carefully so that you'll have the
financial resources to wait for the right offer. "Taking the wrong
job is far worse than not having one," said Claman.
Additional Resources:
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