By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
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What are ways to find out about career growth and collaboration when interviewing with a company?
Um, the first thing that you’re doing is focusing in on demonstrating you’re fit for the job. It’s kind of like in dating. In dating, we don’t talk about on the first date whether or not we’re interested in marriage and having children; we’re trying to get to know one another. So focus on demonstrating how your background fits the role.
There will come a point in the interviews where they’ll ask you, “Do you have any questions for us?” One of the questions is, “I’m sure you know I’m not interested in staying in this role for the next 30 years of my life. If I do quality work, what sort of advancement potential exists here? Could you give me an example of someone’s career path and how they’ve progressed within the organization who started off working for you and has moved on to other things, or has grown within your group?” That deals with the career growth question.
For collaboration: “Give me a sense of the working environment here.” Now the truth is, I wouldn’t take anything that a hiring manager says at face value. I’d want to meet with the team and talk with them about what career growth is like and how collaborative the environment is before I would ever accept something from the hiring manager. The hiring manager is trying to fill a job. That’s all they care about. And I hate to be this blunt, but I will be: what they care about is, can you solve their problem? They don’t care about you and what you want. They may say to the contrary, but it’s the rare employer that really does.
So the long and the short of it is, you have to ask questions of people in order to find out whether what this firm can do to help you. And thus, in the question of career growth, I’ve covered that. With collaboration, it starts off and may start off with, “You know, you’ve been here a lot longer than I would have been by the time I joined. Question for you: you know, I’m used to working in a collaborative environment and not a dog-eat-dog environment. What’s it like here?”
No one will ever tell you it’s a dog-eat-dog environment. They may start to hedge their answer about collaboration, and thus through that indirect answer, they’re telling you they’re not a particularly collaborative environment.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS Career Advice globally because he makes many things in peoples’ careers
easier. Those things can involve job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, career transition, as well as advice about resolving workplace issues. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 3100 episodes.
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