Company culture has long since been acknowledged as an integral part of workplace performance. A recent study found that company culture is the #2 reason executives seek alternative employment opportunities. A thriving company culture can launch executives’ careers to new heights while a static or mismatched culture makes a poor foundation for both individual and company-wide goals. Company culture is built intentionally over many years, but acquisition by a venture capital or private equity firm can rock the foundations of even the strongest company culture. How can you assess a company’s culture to make sure it will help, not hinder your executive performance?
4 Steps to Finding the Right Company Culture
Whether you’re feeling out a job offer or navigating a merger, assessing a company’s culture is crucial to the success of your career. Finding a culture that fits with your personal brand and goals will help you be a better leader and more confident in working towards your professional goals. Here’s how to get started:
- Do your research. Read a company’s public information such as press releases, news reports, and thought leadership pieces to learn what’s important to them and how they’re accomplishing their goals. Don’t forget to read reviews on Glassdoor and Google to see what people think of the company both internally and externally.
- Learn about the leadership team. Scope out the company’s website for an introduction to the company’s core leadership, but don’t stop there. Look them up on LinkedIn and see what else you can learn about their job history, credentials, and leadership styles.
- Do the groundwork. A job may check all of your boxes, but if it’s located in an impersonal building with little natural light, you may want to rethink accepting the position. Location says a lot about a company and can be a good indicator of whether it’s managed to strike the balance between high-performance and workplace community.
- Trust your gut. Once you reach the interview stage, you can learn a lot about how a company operates based on the behavior of the people you interact with. What’s their tone? Their body language? How do they talk about their company and its goals? Pay close attention to find a company that’s culture syncs with your own.
Don’t learn too late that your dream career is a dud. Call Colleen at Executive Resumes Atlanta to help you craft an executive resume that attracts the right companies — and the right cultures.
