How to research a company before a job interview

Good company research does two jobs. It helps you explain why your experience fits the role, and it helps you decide whether the opportunity deserves your time. The strongest preparation uses current first-party evidence and turns gaps into questions instead of filling them with assumptions.

Begin with the vacancy

Read the original job posting again. Highlight responsibilities, outcomes, required skills, location, reporting line and any claim about the team or product. Build your interview examples around the work the employer actually described, not a generic version of the job title.

Save the posting or key details because vacancies can change or close during the process. Keep the source date so you can distinguish what you saw from later information.

Use first-party company sources

Review the employer’s official site, product pages, careers material, newsroom and public filings where relevant. Look for what the company sells, who it serves, which markets it names and how the advertised team contributes.

For Nigerian companies, the Corporate Affairs Commission provides an official company search. A registry entry can help confirm the legal entity, but it does not tell you whether the team, culture or vacancy is good. Use each source only for the claim it can support.

Platform verification badges can add identity or workplace signals. LinkedIn’s own guidance notes that a job verification badge provides information about the company or poster; it does not mean an applicant is more likely to be hired or that the job is a better fit.

Separate evidence from commentary

Employee reviews, posts and forum discussions can surface useful questions, but they are individual accounts. Note the date, role and context. Do not turn one anonymous review into a company-wide fact or repeat an allegation in an interview.

If SalaryPadi publishes an aggregate rating, check the sample size and review window. If the evidence is too small, the honest result is “not enough published evidence,” not a score inferred from silence.

Build an interview brief

Create one page with four sections:

1. Role: the three outcomes that appear most important.
2. Company: current first-party facts relevant to the role.
3. Evidence: two or three examples from your work that match the outcomes.
4. Questions: important unknowns that the interview can resolve.

Useful questions ask how success is measured, why the role is open, what the first ninety days should achieve, how decisions are made and what constraints the team is facing. These are stronger than questions whose answers already sit on the homepage.

Verify the process as you go

Confirm interviewer names, meeting domains and any assignment through the employer’s known channel. Do not send unnecessary identity documents or pay an interview or equipment fee. If the process changes suddenly, verify the new instruction independently.

Research should make you more precise, not more performative. Cite a company fact only when it improves the conversation, acknowledge what you do not know, and use the interview to test whether the written role and the real work match.