Most candidates research an employer after they get an interview. That is backwards. The research is worth most before you apply, because it decides whether the application is worth writing and what it should say.
Here is a twenty-minute routine that works for any employer, in any sector.
Minute 1–5: is the company actually stable?
Start with the boring facts, because they are the ones that decide whether the job still exists in a year.
- Company filings. Most countries publish company registrations, accounts and director changes for free. You are not doing forensic accounting. You are checking that the entity exists, that accounts are filed on time, and that it has not just changed its name.
- Recent news. Search the company name with the current year. Funding, acquisitions, closures, contract wins, regulatory trouble. A company that was acquired last month is a different employer from the one described on its careers page.
- Headcount direction. Look at how many roles they are advertising and in what functions. Ten adverts across engineering, sales and support usually means genuine growth. Thirty adverts all in one call centre usually means churn.
Minute 6–12: what is it like to work there?
Reviews are noisy, but the noise has a pattern. Ignore the one-star rant and the five-star post that reads like marketing. Read the middle-rated reviews, and look for the same specific complaint appearing across several years. "Management is bad" tells you nothing. "Rota is published two days in advance" tells you a great deal.
Then check current employees' public profiles for the role you are applying to. Two questions matter: how long do people stay in this job, and where do they go next? A role people leave after eight months is a role with a problem. A role people leave for a promotion elsewhere is a training ground, which may be exactly what you want.
Minute 13–17: who will you actually work for?
Find the person the role reports to, or the head of the function. You are looking for what they write about, what they have shipped, and how long they have been there. A manager appointed three months ago is rebuilding a team and will value different things from one who has run it for six years.
If the advert is from an agency and will not name the client, treat the whole listing as unverified. Sometimes that is genuine confidentiality. Often it is a advert placed to collect CVs.
Minute 18–20: turn it into the application
Research that does not change your application was wasted. Before you write anything, note down three things:
- The problem the hire solves. Growth, backlog, a departure, a new market, a compliance deadline. The advert usually says it in one sentence buried in the middle.
- One specific thing you know about them that is not on the homepage — a recent launch, a market they entered, a constraint they operate under.
- Two questions you will ask at first contact. Good ones are concrete: how the team is structured, what the last person in the role went on to do, what success at six months looks like.
That is the difference between an application that reads like a form letter and one that reads like it was written for them, and it costs twenty minutes.
When the research tells you not to apply
Sometimes it will. Persistent unpaid-invoice complaints from contractors, a pattern of tribunal claims, an advert that has been live for four months, a company whose accounts are overdue. Walking away at this point costs you twenty minutes. Walking away after four interview rounds costs a month.