Why Would I Want to Filter by Company?
The Company Filter is
1. incredibly powerful.
2. incredibly under utilized, especially in new-to-transitioning folks (not just teachers).
Why? Because a lot of pivoters are focused primarily on the roles/career paths that they’ve outlined for themselves. They often start by shot gunning applications out into the field rather than spending time evaluating companies at the same time.
My recommendation is always to take a two pronged approach and consider both career paths as well as companies. There’s no point in applying for a job that might be a perfect fit if the company isn’t.
Looking at Companies Only: Why and When?
Is there a reason to look at companies without filtering first by a specific job type (i.e. customer success, sales representative, graphic designer, audio specialist, etc.)?
Sure.
1. If you’re a pivoter, it pays to apply to companies that you have connections at.
It’s no secret that you have a higher chance of landing a position at a company where you have a strong connection (family member, friend, etc.) than at one where you have zero references or warm introductions.
Therefore, there are times when looking for a position at a company and applying to a position that isn’t exactly inline with your career focus may be completely acceptable.
For example, if I were looking at applying for customer success positions but knew of a curriculum developer job at a company that a close friend was working at, I’d apply for that position even if it wasn’t my ideal job simply because of the leg-up I’d have with the reference through my close friend and my background in curriculum development.
There is no shame in leveraging connections.
2. This is particularly true for transitioning educators, it pays to apply at companies with which you have experience with their products.
I’ll use myself as an example. It was easy for me to pitch myself as a high quality trainer for Illuminate products because I was an expert with their platform (I will also add here that I knew my Customer Success Manager at Illuminate fairly well and had kept in contact with her over the years so see point one about applying to companies with connections!).
So again – I might apply to a position that isn’t exactly within my focus career path if it’s with a company that I’m very familiar with or have a considerable amount expertise with their products. That means that I can showcase that knowledge and demonstrate that I’m an obvious choice and will require less onboarding and training and can be ready to start in the position immediately or more immediately than someone who is less familiar.
3. The third most common reason I see people filtering by company for positions is the one that I would caution against. On paper, it sounds legit and again, I hear transitioning teachers falling into this trap more often than not (and believe me I did this my fair share as well). Tell me if this sounds familiar.
“Oh, my gosh. I just love company X’s materials. We use their stuff in my classroom/at my school and it’s a life saver. I’m only going to apply there if I can help it. They must be amazing to work for.”
Again, this sounds like reasonable thinking but unfortunately the quality of a company’s materials lies squarely with the people creating the content and their work ethic and attention to detail and not with the company’s salaries, PTO/maternity/paternity benefits policies, culture, etc.
Therefore, it’s important to be doing your homework on the companies you think you want to work for before you base your decision on the materials that they create.
Company Filter: Best Practices
Now that we’ve considered some possibilities for why you might search for positions at companies without first filtering by a career type, let’s talk about best practices.
Grouping
Going back to your job hunting calendar, you’ve identified a day as an application day. Perfect.
For that day, select your career focus. In my example, I’m using Customer Success Manager as my career focus.
If I start by filtering ONLY by Customer Success Manager, I end up with over 113,000+ results. Now, bear in mind that I haven’t enabled any other filters like Date posted, Job type, On-site/remote, etc. so I still have a long way to go, however, just by toggling the company filter with a few companies that I’m interested in applying to, I can take the number from 113,000+ to 17.
My recommendation is to look at somewhere between 6 – 8 companies until you get somewhere around 10 jobs. At this point, continue to filter down by Date posted, Job type, and On-site/remote and add companies until you end up with about 10 jobs.
10 jobs was about the number of jobs I could apply to in a single 3 – 4 hour sitting and still feel fresh by the end.
Q&A
What if I apply to a company before I've vetted it?
That’s fine. Most people apply to the majority of jobs before fully vetting (or even partially vetting) a company.
Even making a shortlist of things to check ahead of time can give you some peace of mind. Consider prioritizing three things that you’d like to know about a company before you apply. For example, my top three things might be:
1. Medical benefits
2. Women in leadership positions
3. How many people would recommend the company to friends and family
At least then you’ll know if a company meets your minimum criteria before you apply.
What if I'd applied to a company before I'd vetted it and now I'm thinking I don't want to work there?
First, don’t panic.
I would consider several things – how far from your wants and needs does the company fall. Is it a place where could work for a period of time and then transfer – remember that getting your foot into an industry isn’t always easy but transferring once you have experience is.
If the company is way off the mark and you know for sure that it isn’t a good fit for you, You can politely decline the initial screener or first interview by saying that you’ve decided to pursue other options or that you’re no longer interested in this opportunity. My only caution here is that you want to remain cordial and civil – you never know when you may cross paths with the recruiter or hiring manager from this company at another place and the last thing you want is for them to remember you as rude or condescending. Remember – they don’t represent the company, they’re doing their job.
How much background information should I be gathering before I decide if I want to apply at a specific company?
See question 1.
It’s really up to you. Get whatever information you feel you need to make an informed decision.
I tend to be an over-gatherer. The upside to that is that I knew a lot about a company before I made a decision. The downside is that I spent a lot of time gathering that information which was time that could have gone towards applying.
It’s a give and take.
I didn’t ever feel as accomplished in the applications department but I did always feel like I was applying to jobs that were absolutely a good fit for me (especially after I really got a hang of the calendar, company, and non-negotiables components).