Are You Doing Your Job Search Homework?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Career Development  

When I started my career, it was very difficult to find out much information about different organizations. I started my career in banking in England, and decided early on that I wanted to work for a company other than one of the big UK banks. But all I could do to find out about the smaller ones was to turn to the back of something called “The Sort Code Book” (which every bank branch had), where there was a section for “other” along with the name and address of a bunch of different small banks.

So, I wrote to 103 of them with my CV (English version of a résumé) and a cover letter…and waited. Over the next few weeks, I got various replies in the mail, and eventually one of them invited me for an interview. That bank, C. Hoare & Co., eventually became my gateway into project management—and changed the direction of my career. But going into the interview, I knew nothing about C. Hoare & Co. I went to the library to try and find out some things, but got nowhere.

Did I worry about that? Not really, because that was normal. I expected to receive some information at the interview, and I did—they gave me a brochure that explained the basics, and no one asked me what I knew of them, or expected me to be aware of their approach, history or anything else. Even when I started working, there was no expectation that I …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.