What to do when you receive your first match?

Imagine you’ve just received your first match with an employer. The role is perfectly suited to your skill-set, but haven’t heard of this mysterious employer before. How do you go about determining if they’re a good fit for you? How can you get a sense of the company without meeting anyone from their team? Luckily for you, we’ve pulled together a few tips and tricks to help you understand if an opportunity is worth your while or not. This way you can focus on only targeting opportunities that will bring the best out of you.

Carefully read the company website
Finding information online about a company can be hard. Deciphering it can be even harder. It’s important you set aside time to carefully read as much as you can about the company on their website. This information is gold. It will give you an in-depth understanding of the company and the kinds of things they value. In particular, carefully read over the mission and values. This is often a good indicator of the organisational culture. If you find yourself agreeing with the mission and values, you’ll probably fit well within the organisation.
 
Check out their social media presence
In today’s day and age it shouldn’t just be employers checking out social media presence. You can actually do the same with them. Checking out an employer's social media is a great way to learn more about a company. It can help you to determine if its culture is a good fit with you. LinkedIn and Twitter are great social media tools to begin with. You can start by looking what what they post. Do they post interesting content? Do they promote their own staff? These types of questions can help take you closer to understanding if the organisation matches exactly what you’re looking for.

Leverage your network
One of the best things you can do to get a sense of a place is talk to someone who works there (or has in the past). If you’re lucky enough to know someone (or even someone who knows someone) you should reach out and ask them questions about the company. If you’re not so fortunate, you can always use LinkedIn, Facebook groups or even your university alumni group to find people with experience at the company. Your focus here is to confirm whether what you’ve researched is actually true (i.e. does the company just talk the talk or do they also walk the walk). A good starting point is to ask about their personal experience and what they think of the company culture and leadership. This will help shed light on if this opportunity is right for you or not.

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