Fitting in:
How can you tell if you’re a good match for a prospective employer?
A Chicago-based administrative assistant says she had a bad feeling about a job she accepted on her first day in 2015 when she walked around the office to meet people. “No one was smiling, no one looked happy and even though I was being introduced to everyone, people barely lifted their heads to say hello,” says Carol, who didn’t want her last name used for this story. “I was like ‘oh my goodness. What have I just done?’”
Carol says after seriously considering not returning for her second day, she says she went in hopeful that she misread her co-workers on her first day. About an hour into day two, she realized she had not. “People were just grumpy, nasty, not pleasant at all,” she says. “But I stuck it out and at my six-month review, I asked for a transfer to another department that had an admin opening. The hours were different, which is the excuse I used, but I just had to get out of my job at that time.”
After receiving the transfer, Carol says the changes were almost immediate. “They took me out for lunch my first day, they all came by to introduce themselves and they were pretty happy — lots of laughing, joking around,” she says. “It was like night and day from where I was two stories up.”
Carol attributes part of the new attitude to her new boss, who she says was much more positive and encouraging than her previous manager. “She was just — it sounds dumb to say this — cheerful, you know, just happy,” Carol says.
But the joy she was getting from her new position came from more than just her boss; it came from her co-workers as well. “When there’s a great group in a company, people gravitate to that group,” Carol says. “We were kind of an island.”
Find your ‘people’
Barry Quinn, a career adviser in Houston, Texas, says he tells his clients that they need to look beyond what a company does to see who they hire to do it. “You have to have a working relationship with your peers, that’s the number-one priority, but you’re going to really excel if you’re with like-minded folk,” says Quinn. “When my daughter went to college, she told me she finally found her people, which I didn’t know if I should take as an insult or not. But she meant it to describe the type of people in her dorm, in her major. She found people — and nothing to do with race or gender — who viewed the world as she did. I thought that was pretty cool and it gave my wife and me a lot of peace of mind.”
Quinn says it’s really a question of fitting into a company’s culture — and not being so determined to come in and change things the minute you start.
Carol can relate. She says after her bad first day, she tried to lighten things up by making small-talk with her co-workers, bringing in breakfast treats, setting up small contests for free coffee and other light-hearted attempts at bringing a smile to her co-workers’ faces. “But nothing worked,” she says. “There were a few cracks here and there but for the most part, people were like, ‘um, what are you doing? Are you weird or what?’”
Check it out
Since the pandemic, it’s harder to gauge what your potential co-workers think about their jobs because most interviews aren’t conducted in an office setting. “You miss a lot of the subtext of a job when you can’t physically visit the workspace once or twice before accepting an offer,”
says Matthew Blackman, a corporate consultant and former
HR specialist with Microsoft and Citibank. “You can’t see how people interact with each other, how they treat visitors, how they work. Interviewing via computer really limits your knowledge of your employer.”
Blackman says current hiring procedures make it essential that job seekers really do their homework before accepting an offer. “There are websites that have employee ratings for companies, which can be pretty telling. They can also run a pretty wide gamut of opinions so try to look for reviews from people who are in the role you’re interviewing for,” he says.
Blackman says it’s also acceptable to ask your contacts for feedback. “You probably have someone in your LinkedIn list who either worked there or knows someone who works there. First-hand knowledge is your best source of information,” Blackman says. “Don’t be obnoxious about asking; be professional, explain what you’re looking for and ask for an opinion. And promise confidentiality, if
necessary.”