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Students often ask, "What's the most important thing in preparing for an interview?"

The answer is knowing about the employer. Interviewers call it "doing your homework." Your goal is to show the employer that you are the best fit for this position. The only way you can do that is to research your potentional  employer and know all you can about the role you're trying to fill.

In interviews, employers expect you to arrive knowing background information about the organization. If you don't, they may assume you're not interested in the job. You have to be able to answer the critical question of why you would like to work for that employer — not sound like you would take any job.

Research helps you formulate intelligent and appropriate questions to ask in your interview.

The position: It's a good idea to look up the company and position you're interviewing with to know if it's a good fit for you. Take a look at:
  • Mission/culture
  • News stories about the company
  • Products or services they offer
  • Market share, stock prices, number of employees, & annual sales
  • Competitors
  • Financial outlook 

The people: Knowing who makes up the company and interviewing team will help you be more at ease for the interview:

  • Find out who is interviewing you? Ask if you don’t know
  • Visit CareerShift to find articles mentioning your interviewers
  • Use Google & LinkedIn to learn about your interviewers

The location: Where you will end up is an important part of applying to jobs. Do some research on the location of this position:

There are many ways you can learn more about the potential position you are interested in:

  • Talk to people! Find people who work for or know about the organization. This could be people you meet at a career fair, family members, neighbors, parents of friends, students who graduated ahead of you, and alumni contacts.  Alumni Relations at Virginia Tech provides career networking. Use LinkedIn to find individuals who work for the organization. Reach out with a personalized (not a generic) invitation to connect.
  • Use the employer's website. Look for basic facts, information about mission, culture, values and more. If the website posts jobs or the organization invites email from job seekers or accepts resumes online, follow the instructions the employer provides.
  • Research news sources to learn what's making news about the organization. Note sources of information you find and and gauge the credibility of those sources. 
  • Contact the organization and ask for information, but not until you've searched for it elsewhere. This is perfectly appropriate to do if you simply cannot find information about the organization through their website, or if the information is not clear. If you have an interview scheduled with an employer, the employer should have already provided information. If not, by all means, ask.

For more in depth research tools about future employers, view this page of additional research resources.