How to Research Before an Interview (3 Practical Tools)
About this video
Jeff Su argues that everyone advises interview research but nobody shows the steps, so he demonstrates three free tools and how to use their findings in small talk, in answers, and in the questions you ask at the end. First, Google Alerts: pair search operators with a company name to build a personal news assistant — a job function in quotation marks plus the site: operator on the company’s careers page (careers.google.com or tesla.com/careers in his examples) surfaces new postings early, when applications are read more closely; the company name plus ‘competition’ reveals rivals and industry challenges; and the company name plus ‘quarterly earnings’ delivers financial news useful for finance and sales roles. He cautions to set up only one or two alerts and actually read them. Second, Google Trends: chart demand over five years — his electric cars example shows a sharp COVID-era dip in March 2020 against a fundamentally rising long-term trend — and use that fundamentals view to answer ‘why do you want to work here’; comparing rival products side by side (his example pairs his in-video note that over 70% of Google’s 2020 Q2 revenue came from Google Ads with a Google Ads versus Facebook Ads interest comparison) also generates sharp closing questions. Third, the Vault Career Library at vault.com: premium reports such as Vault’s Verdict are available free through many universities, and even the free Career Advice industry overviews — he walks through the Energy industry page, including its defining-events section — supply talking points and informed questions about how current policy may shape an industry.
Key takeaways
- Use Google Alerts with site: and quoted job-function searches to catch new postings before other applicants
- Track a company plus ‘competition’ and ‘quarterly earnings’ alerts for interview talking points
- Use Google Trends’ multi-year view to argue industry fundamentals in ‘why do you want to work here’
- Compare a company’s product against its rival’s in Trends to generate strong end-of-interview questions
- Mine Vault’s industry overviews and defining-events sections for context most candidates never find
Episode details: published September 30, 2020 · 9:48 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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