•What do you like the most about working there? What do you like the least?
•Is it a training-focused company? If so, does it send employees to outside training programs, or does it hold regular in-house trainings?
•What are three words that best describe the culture of the company?
•How does the company treat its employees in general?
•Does the company hold a lot of events for its employees? If so, what kind? Are employees’ families invited to these parties, too?
•On a scale from 1-10, how open to new ideas is the company? What examples can you share with me to show why you give it that score?
•Would you say that the company is more team- or individual- oriented? Can you share with me a few examples of why you think that?
The answers will give you great clues about what to focus on in your resume and interview. If you find out the company values integrity and collaboration skills, you can get some examples ready to share in an interview about situations in school, groups, internships, or part-time jobs where you’ve been able to show your integrity and how well you work with others.
Of course (and this does happen), in the process of getting answers to your questions, you may find out you no longer want to apply to a particular company. That’s actually a good thing! Scratch that company off your list, and focus your energy on getting a job in a different company that’s a better fit for your specific likes, dislikes, and talents.
Once you know about the companies where you’d like to work, you can use the same ideas to find out about a specific division, department, or branch office. Most of the time, there’s a ton of information out there about the particular area you’re interested in.
Find Out About the Interviewer
Sometimes, before an interview, you may actually be told who your interviewer will be. If you’re only given the person’s title, be quick to ask for the person’s name. If you still don’t get the name, try an Internet search for the company name and the interviewer’s title to see if a name shows up. No matter how you get the name of your interviewer — which is a bit like being handed a golden key — rev up your favorite search engine. Also, look for him or her on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Knowledge is power! So, the more you know, the better you can be prepared for your interview. You may not want to talk about any of the information you’ve discovered in your search — especially if it’s something personal like the name of the interviewer’s children — but the information you find may tell you a lot about the interviewer’s personality. And that can definitely come in handy.
The bottom line is this: The more information you can find out about your interviewer, the more confident you’ll feel in your interviews.
Your College Graduate Personal Brand Positioning Statement
Now that you’ve dug deep and got information about the Audience for your personal brand, it’s time to start putting together your College Graduate Personal Brand Positioning Statement.
To help you with your own statement, let’s look at a couple of examples. The following College Graduate Personal Brand Positioning Statements are from two students who have different majors, backgrounds, personalities, and job search objectives. As we work through the chapters, we’ll follow along and see how these two college students completed each section of their Positioning Statements. Hopefully, these examples will give you lots of ideas and help you understand how the different sections of your own Positioning Statement all fit together. We’ll even show you how these two grads went about their own Audience research and what methods they used to find out about one of their main target companies. Let’s start with Nicole.
Case Study — Nicole Caviellieri
Nicole had been interested in medicine since she was young, so when she entered her state’s university as a freshman, she immediately declared Pre-Med as her major. But halfway through her sophomore year, Nicole was struggling — she just didn’t have what it took to get through the science classes necessary to get into med school. So, Nicole switched her major to Business Administration, a move which helped her grades turn around (her Business Administration GPA was a strong 3.68). However, because of poor science grades during her freshman and sophomore years, Nicole’s GPA at the end of her senior year was just barely at 3.1. She knew she would have to explain this in her interviews and cover letters.
Even though Business Administration felt like a great direction for Nicole, she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after she graduated. Then, her uncle suggested she combine her passion for medicine, her business studies, and her outgoing personality and explore becoming a sales rep for a medical supply firm. The idea of selling products that helped make peoples’ lives better really excited Nicole. After doing some research into medical sales rep positions, she felt like she finally knew what she would like to do coming out of college.
To create a list of potential employers, Nicole searched Google and LinkedIn for “medical supply company,” “medical products company,” and “pharmaceutical company.” Several company names came up, but after reading through a lot of profiles, the company she was most interested in was a large pharmaceutical firm called Medo-Innovations. Through her research, Nicole learned that almost no one could expect to land a pharmaceutical sales job right out of college. It required about 2-3 years of work in general medical sales first. But Medo-Innovations had a good-sized medical supply division, too, and Nicole felt that working in that division for 2-3 years would be a great way to get started in the field and possibly help her move into pharmaceutical sales later on.
She visited the Medo-Innovations booth at her university’s career fair and had a chance to talk with a company rep there. The talk went well, and Nicole found out that Medo-Innovations had plans to expand their sales force in the coming year. The rep took her resume, and then — a week later — Nicole received a call asking her to set up an initial phone interview with a Medo-Innovations in-house HR recruiter.
Nicole prepared carefully for the phone interview and felt that her interview went well. It was a basic interview that covered some key questions about why she was interested in the company, why she wanted to sell medical supplies, how she felt about her GPA, and included some verification of other items on her resume. She was told that if the company was interested, she would be called for an in- person interview with the hiring manager. Two weeks later, Nicole was excited to get that call.
Then, it was time to prepare for the interview! Nicole looked up Medo-Innovations on Twitter and read some articles on the Internet, where she found out that the division would soon be releasing a new type of glucose monitor that was one of the key reasons for the expansion of its sales force.
Nicole looked up the company on Facebook and found a fan page for the medical supply division. There were a lot of photos of people in the division enjoying events together. She joined the fan page, signed up to follow the company’s tweets on Twitter, and looked for Medo-Innovations employees on LinkedIn. In the process, she found out that a friend of hers was connected on LinkedIn to someone who knew one of the sales reps of the division. Through this LinkedIn connection, Nicole was able to set up a phone call with the rep and got some inside information that she hadn’t asked the rep at the career fair.
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