This Is How to Evaluate a Future Employer in a Job Interview

Do you have an interview coming up? You are probably preparing for it all wrong! Typical job candidates spend most of their time rehearsing answers. Instead, they should be looking for ways to evaluate their potential employer. Here’s how to use your job interview to find out if a job is right for you.

Why You Should Evaluate Potential Employers

Harvard Business Review reported that, on average, workers change jobs once every three or four years. Of course, an employee might change jobs for unavoidable or unforeseeable reasons. Others unknowingly set themselves up for failure on the job interview.

A recent study by Leadership IQ found that nearly half of newly-hired employees fail within the first 18 months. For some of these new workers, the problem is that they struggle to fit into the company’s culture. Within the first few weeks of working a new job, they might find out that they don’t work well with their supervisors, but it’s too late! Eventually, their discontent is too strong, and they quit the job they worked so hard to acquire. What a waste!

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Boris Groysberg, a Harvard Business School professor, says that the ability to evaluate a job offer is an essential skill for modern professionals. “Yet,” the Harvard Business article states, “most people do it poorly.” Thankfully, you can discover a significant amount of information about your employer during the interview. Equipped with the facts, you can decide whether the job will work for you.

Ask the Right Questions

According to Dr. Thomas J. Denham, founder of Careers in Transition LLC, your boss is one of the seven most important factors of job satisfaction. “Without a boss who is committed to helping you learn and succeed, other benefits aren’t worth as much.” In Denham’s article “Evaluating Job Offers and Negotiating Salary,” he suggests gauging your chemistry with your boss just like you would with a romantic prospect. Do you get along with him or her? Would you feel comfortable with your potential boss’s management style? Is he or she interested in your growth?

To discover these factors, ask if your interviewer minds a few get-to-know-you questions, such as “Why did you decide to enter this career? What do you like best about your job? What’s the hardest part about working here?”

What the Answers Reveal

How did the employer respond when you suggested asking questions of your own?

With Dismissiveness: A flippant or incomplete response is a red flag. The supervisor may be stingy with her time—a potential disaster if you need clarification of job tasks in the future.

With Outrage: Does he seem offended that you dare to question him? If he doesn’t realize that it’s important for you to evaluate the job, he might never have your interests at heart. You want to work for someone who considers your needs, not someone who gets huffy under the slightest provocation.

With Delight: If the interviewer is pleased that you’re so interested in getting to know her, it’s a good sign! Don’t you want an employer who is open and friendly?

With Criticism: Kay Bosworth, a former editor for a business education magazine, describes a good boss: “He is honest and straightforward, which means you should not have to worry about where you stand with him. He’s willing to share responsibility when things go wrong.” If the manager blames his team for problems during the interview, you might be next under fire if you work under his direction.

With Seriousness: A reasonable manager would realize that the more you know about your working conditions, the better you can evaluate if you will fit in with the company. Your questions deserve respect. Complete answers reveal that the boss takes your concerns seriously.

If the Interviewer Isn’t the Boss

What should you do if someone other than the boss conducts the interview? You can still learn much about management from the interview. You might ask what resources will be provided to do your job. If the resources are scarce, it could reveal that the managers are out of touch with the needs of the employees or that the company might be struggling to make ends meet.

Also, take a gander around the building before and after your interview. Do the employees seem happy? How is the workspace? Contented employees usually invest time in making their offices homey because they want to stay at their job long-term. Bare personal cubicles indicate that employees have a sense of detachment from their job.

Don’t lose the opportunity to get to know your future employer. If you ask the right questions, you’ll successfully evaluate whether the job is a good fit for you. What will your next interview reveal? Much will depend on how observant you are.

When to Use Of vs. Off?

• Of is a preposition that indicates relationships between other words, such as belonging, things made of other things, things that contain other things, or a point of reckoning.
• Off is usually used as an adverb or a preposition. In both cases, it indicates separation or disconnection.

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Mixing them up is always a mistake, but of and off are commonly confused nonetheless. Below, we’ve listed some common situations where you want to use of and some where off is the correct choice.

When to Use Of

We use of when we want to show that people or things relate to other things or people. For example, when we want to say that something or someone belongs to or is a part of something or someone else, we can do it like this:

Tiffany stared at the floor of her room.

He resigned his position as a member of the school board.

We can also use of to say that something consists of something else, or that it contains something else:

He picked up a piece of wood.

She likes to drink a glass of milk before going to bed.

When we want to give a position in space or time, we might use of to link the position with a reference we already know:

He didn’t feel at home north of the Wall.

At the time of the Viking raids, people spoke a very different kind of English.

Of could be used when we create a noun phrase from a verb phrase:

They had to clean up the house before their parents arrived.

They had to clean up the house before the arrival of their parents..

When to Use Off

Off is the opposite of on:

The radio was on, but she needed peace and quiet so she turned it off.

You should always make sure the stove is turned off before leaving the house.

Off can also be used when we want to say that something is away from a place:

He was walking his dog without a leash, and the dog ran off.

After walking Taylor home, Steve set off into the city.

We can use off when we want to say that something has been removed:

He cleaned the spilled soup off the kitchen floor.

They took the wheel off the car.

Examples

My favourite film of 2016 was the spine-tingling British production Under the Shadow from Iran-born, London-based writer/director Babak Anvari.

The Guardian

Can the Guardians battle the bad guys while still keeping their band of ne’er-do-wells together?

Wired

The Briton could only win the title if Rosberg finished off the podium.

Reuters

Sony and its partners showed off a bunch of games at yesterday’s PSX Keynote event.

Forbes

Who vs. Whom

Whom should be used to refer to the object of a verb or preposition. When in doubt, try this simple trick: If you can replace the word with “he”’ or “’she,” use who. If you can replace it with “him” or “her,” use whom.

• Who should be used to refer to the subject of a sentence.
• Whom should be used to refer to the object of a verb or preposition.

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Who or whom? If you’re like most English speakers, you know that there’s a difference between these pronouns, but you aren’t sure what that difference is. After reading this article, you might conclude that knowing when to use who or whom is not as difficult as you think.

When to Use Who

In a sentence, who is used as a subject. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Who would like to go on vacation?

Who made these awesome quesadillas?

When to Use Whom

Whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition. Consider these examples:

To whom was the letter addressed?

Whom do you believe?

I do not know with whom I will go to the prom.

The Difference Between Who and Whom

How can you tell when your pronoun is the object of a verb or preposition? Try substituting “he” or “she” and “him” or “her.” If “he” or “she” fits, you should use who. If “him” or “her” fits, you should use whom. Keep in mind that you may have to temporarily rearrange the sentence a bit while you test it.

Who/whom ate my sandwich?

Try substituting “she” and “her”: She ate my sandwich. Her ate my sandwich. “She” works and “her” doesn’t. That means the word you want is who.

Whom ate my sandwich?

Who ate my sandwich?

Let’s look at another:

Who/whom should I talk to about labeling food in the refrigerator?

Try substituting “he” and “him”: I should talk to he. I should talk to him. “Him” works, so the word you need is whom.

Whom should I talk to about labeling food in the refrigerator?

You can also use questions to determine when to use who and when to use whom. Are you talking about someone who is doing something?

Gina drives her mother’s car to school.

Yes, you are talking about someone doing something, so use who in your question.

Who drives her mother’s car to school?

Now look at this sentence:

The car is driven to school by Gina.

No, the subject of the sentence (car) is not performing the action. Use whom in your question.

The car is driven to school by whom?

By whom is the car driven to school?

If you think the whom examples sound awkward or prissy, you are not alone. Many people don’t use whom in casual speech or writing. Others use it only in well-established phrases such as “to whom it may concern.” Some people never use it. It’s not unusual at all to hear sentences like these:

Who do you believe?

Who should I talk to about labeling food in the refrigerator?

Who vs. Whom Quiz

The Best Ways to Set Goals and (Actually) Get Results From Them

A few years ago, I had to come to terms with my burgeoning habit of browsing housing rental ads on Craigslist for places in the Pacific Northwest. I’d look at the listings and wonder, What would it be like to live in Washington? Wondering soon turned to obsession, and obsession spurred research. Before I knew it, I’d made a decision—I was going to leave my ancestral home in the upper Midwest and trek two thousand miles to live near the shores of Puget Sound.

I’d set a goal: “Head west, young (*cough*) woman! Head west!”

I’m at my desk now writing this article from what I consider to be the happiest place on earth. The natural surroundings, the people, and the culture called me here and I have an overwhelming sense that I’ve found where I was meant to be. But I couldn’t have done it without setting goals.

It turns out that I accidentally did goal-setting right. I chose one overarching intention, set a concrete goal, which I focused on from a positive angle, and then broke it down into achievable steps. Although I didn’t look into goal-setting techniques before I determined that I was moving west no matter what it took, I got lucky—psychology backs up my methods. Here’s how I made it happen.

Begin by setting your intention.

What do you want? Start with the big picture. For me, moving west was part of a more abstract desire: “Find your place in the world.” Your overarching motivation might be to get healthier, or to be less solitary. Your intention isn’t the same as your goal; it’s the why behind it.

Take time for deep reflection. What do you truly want to accomplish or see change in your life? We have a tendency toward wishful thinking, but it’s effort, not daydreaming, that makes our wishes into reality. Setting an intention is the first step toward actualizing your desires.

Set a concrete goal.

Now it’s time to set your primary goal, the Big Thing you want to achieve that will bring you closer to your intentions. There are just a few simple rules.

• Aim to be actual. Think of this process as taking a big abstract goal and making it more concrete. For me, this step meant taking “find your place in the world” a step further with “move to the Pacific Northwest.” For you, “get healthier” might begin with “be more active.” Make sure your goal is something you can actually do. You may want to become a rich, famous novelist, but that’s dependent on a lot of outside factors, from agents to editors to fickle markets. It’s okay to be ambitious, but keep your goal within the realm of possibility. “Finish writing a novel” would be a better place to start.
• Frame your goal in a positive way. When I decided to move west, I thought of it as beginning a new life adventure rather than getting the hell out of my small Midwestern town. Positive motivation is the key, whereas negativity and avoidance-based goal-setting doesn’t seem to work as well. So, choose goals like “eat healthier” over “lose weight.”
• Write down your goal, and then write a little bit about it every day as you imagine what your life might be like if everything progressed perfectly. Do this for several days in a row. Research shows this technique works!
• Make sure it’s about you. The only person you can control is yourself, which is why a goal like “get people to like me” doesn’t work while “be more sociable” does.

Break your goal down into actionable steps . . . backwards.

I wanted to move west. I knew that much. Now, I had to figure out how to make it happen. That involved assessing my huge goal, figuring out all the smaller steps I’d need to take to get results, and prioritizing them. Trying to suss out how to get from A to Z can feel overwhelming. That’s why it’s sometimes easier to work backwards. My move west is a good example of that process in action.

I imagined the very last thing I would need to accomplish right before achieving my goal—“move into my new place.” What would have to happen right before that? Hmm. I’d have to drive cross-country. And before that? Pack my moving truck. And prior to packing my moving truck, I’d have to pack my stuff into boxes.

But before I could pack a moving truck, I’d have to actually rent one. The flow of your action plan won’t always be linear, and you’ll realize that certain steps (packing a truck) are sub-tasks of another (rent a truck). That’s okay. The idea of working backwards is simply to get things rolling along. Pondering your steps from the top down can feel overwhelming, but working backwards breaks that spell. Think of it more as a brainstorming session. You’ll organize everything later.

Keep the process fluid. Part of achieving your goals is being able to adjust your action plan as you go along. For instance, I originally planned to secure a moving truck, and I even went so far as to rent one. But then I decided that I didn’t have furniture valuable enough to warrant me paying nearly $3,000 to move it across the United States. I revised my plan, organized a huge moving sale, donated what I couldn’t sell, and packed my most important treasures into my minivan.

Goals are meant to help you shape yourself into the person you want to be. It’s all you, baby! Just remember that nothing, not even your goal itself, is written in stone. It’s completely up to you to decide where you want to be in life and how you’ll get there. You’re the master of your fate.

Study Shows Political Language Is Changing, Affects Parties Differently

Though we might not think much about them in the context of all the issues discussed during elections, rhetoric and language play a critical role in the success of U.S. presidential candidates. The 2016 presidential election process has been particularly fascinating and prompted us to take a closer look at how election language has changed over time and how it influences candidate success.

In our study, we found:

• the complexity of politicians’ language is decreasing, according to analysis using seven different Grammarly clarity algorithms, such as sentence length and frequency of the passive voice, and
• less complex language correlates with higher poll results for Republican politicians, while simpler rhetoric corresponds to lower poll results for Democrats.

Do you follow U.S. presidential elections? Have you noticed any changes in language over the years?

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Methodology Grammarly aggregated the debate transcripts transcribed by UCSB. We ran our most accurate and applicable clarity checks for speech on the transcripts. Grammarly focused on the candidates who were in general elections since 1960 for the study of general elections. For the 2016 election cycle, we analyzed candidates who had an average rating of at least 5 percent from July 1, 2015, to May 8, 2016. The top 15 topics were taken from Google’s On the Issues Rich Cards.

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