I was thinking about my mom today and she used to have a saying; you can pick your friends or you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.  Yeah, it's fairly gross and nonsensical, but it helped to cheer us up when we were having troubles making or getting along with our friends. 

It got me thinking about how Gretchen and I have been talking a lot about JobSyntax and how lucky we are to be working together, dictating our own schedules and all the perks that go along with owning your own company.  It also got me thinking about jobseekers and the choices they have to make when thinking about joining a company. 

The supposition is that you can pick a great company to work for OR you can try to pick great people you want to interact with, but you can’t have both.  I’m here to say that I think you can have both.  Starting your own company is proof positive that you can choose great co-workers AND build a great company. But not everyone has the option or desire to start their own business.  So what do you do?

It certainly can be a struggle for jobseekers looking for a career at an established company to find the right balance of a great company and great co-workers, but I truly believe that there are steps that you can take to increase the odds of finding that balance.

If you are referred into a company by friends:
Ignore your friends when they tell you about where they work and do your own research.  I’ve seen countless people take a position because they want to work with friends or colleagues from previous companies.  A few months down the line they realize that, while the people are great, they are stymied by the company’s poor reputation, policies, or there isn’t a match between the company values and there own.  It happens to the best of us. 

One way to handle this situation is to do your own research through the interview process.  Start with simple Google searches on the company name, and then try to find out if there are people blogging about the company or if there is other information on sites like Vault.  From there check out Forbes and Fortune.  If you want to take it one step further you can even by short term jobseeker subscriptions to sites like Hoovers. 

If you want to work at a company for its strong reputation, but don’t know anyone working there:
Filter what the company’s recruiters, and yes interviewers at times, are saying about the company.  These are your main sources of information, but they are biased and trained to sell you on all the company’s high points.  Outside of doing your own research (see above) also ask if you can speak with a couple people outside of your interview loop. 

This may seem like an odd (but not unreasonable) request, but again they’ll put the best sellers on an interview loop and it’s great to get a different perspective.  Try to find people in similar positions to the one that you’re interviewing for and who are at your same level of experience.  Ask them questions about working at the company, how they heard about the company, how long they’ve worked there, and the positives and negatives about the job.  This unfettered opinion could be key in helping you make the decision to join a company (or not). 

All this research and interviewing is meant to inform your decision.  There is a caution here that you shouldn’t believe everything you read (or are told), but if you are hearing lots of negatives (or so many positives it seems too good to be true) about a company don’t ignore them during the interview process.  Ask tough questions and see how they address your concerns.  If you find that people are balking at your requests for information, then you should probably take that to mean that they are trying to hide something.  Not good.

The underlying message here is; don’t settle if you don’t have to and keep your standards high.  While there is some amount of bull that you’ll have to put up with at any company, define what you will tolerate in advance.  Then, if you see those red flags thrown up during an interview, you’ll at least have a baseline which you can work from when making a final decision.

In the end, with the right amount of research and personal level setting you can strike a balance between a great company and great people.  Just don’t try to pick their noses.