Figuring Out If a Company’s Culture Is Right for You

Author: Kristi DePaul

Would you want to work for a company with this job description?

We are looking for strong, determined candidates with one to three years of experience. Your boss won’t bother to invest in your career development, you won’t be able to speak your mind, and your contributions will be of little value to our leadership team. But the salary is great!

Probably not. Sadly, this description is accurate in more companies than you might think, though they rarely admit it in the real job description. A majority of respondents (61%) to a Glassdoor survey said that they found aspects of a new job different from what they had expected from the interview process. Company culture was cited as one factor that differs most.

Whether you’re just starting out or are looking to make a career change, company culture might be the most important thing to consider during your search. In business speak, culture refers to an organization’s shared beliefs and values. Culture is often established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced through various methods. It impacts everything from your interactions with colleagues and customers to your advancement, career satisfaction, and mental health.

As a job applicant, you want to find a culture that aligns with your values, that is, the ethics that guide you, fulfill you, and make you feel a sense of purpose. Misalignments on your values—say, an employer insists you work late nights and weekends, or an organization fails to show its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion—can affect your day-to-day well-being, dampen your motivation, and, in extreme cases, result in physical illness.

Before the cultural changes spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, decoding company culture was slightly easier. Just as you can get a sense of a person by walking into their apartment and looking at their books and decor, you can gauge a lot of information by walking into a physical office space. You can get a feel for the people, the layout, and, generally, how things are done.

But now that workplaces are more remote than in the past, how can you actively and deliberately figure out whether an environment is right for you? To gain clarity, I connected with a few experts in this area. Here’s what they had to say.

Scour the Internet for Evidence

Almost anything can be found online these days—and that includes a company’s culture. You just have to know what to look for.

“Ideally, companies will have a mission, vision, and culture statement accessible online,” says Kaleem Clarkson, a cofounder and the chief operating officer of Blend Me. He told me that job seekers should start by paying extra attention to the nuances of language in these messages. Let’s look at some ways to tease out company culture online.

Analyze the words used in job descriptions

Pay special attention to how postings are written; their wording can reveal beliefs and priorities that aren’t overtly shared. For example, posts that emphasize hustling to meet frequent deadlines and tout perks like happy hours—but give no nod to workplace flexibility—may indicate that work-life balance isn’t top of mind. Keep in mind that some keywords may initially sound positive: On the surface, scrappy might sound like resourceful. But it might actually mean something very different: that a company expects you to do a lot with few resources or that it intends to underpay you.

Use a gender bias decoder

There are a variety of online tools that read text and analyze its tone for gender bias. Job descriptions that skew more masculine with words like competitive, dominant, or leader, for instance, may result in a lower response from women candidates.

Check out job review boards like Glassdoor

Sometimes even Reddit will have threads about certain organizations, depending on how large or well known the company is. Reading anonymous reviews from current and former employees will give you more insight—with the caveat that not every review is accurate. Comments that point to unrealistic workloads or expectations, a lack of growth opportunities, groupthink (especially in more homogeneous industries), or toxic internal cultures are red flags.

Last, do some digging on social media

See what an employer is currently sharing on its channels. Then scroll back to dates around times of controversy or uncertainty to see how it reacted to social movements, civil unrest, instances of racism, or matters of public health. The company’s responses in these moments can reveal a great deal about its core values and beliefs.

You might also find that certain organizations demonstrate their most valuable commitments via social media. For example, IBM promotes gender equity through its returnship program—an initiative that helps people restart their careers and that has supported many women who left the workforce to care for family members. Other businesses, like REI, use social media to build awareness around consumerism and its impact on the environment. REI’s #OptOutside campaign emerged as an alternative to Black Friday sales, and it embodies the company’s ethos.

Uncover What Lies Beneath

Michelle MiJung Kim, CEO of Awaken, recommends taking a more granular approach. “I’m a fan of asking specific questions during interviews,” she says. “You can use scenarios to get more detailed answers on the culture. Otherwise, people may default to overly generalized descriptions like ‘We’re very collaborative!,’ ‘We’re results-oriented,’ or ‘We care about diversity and inclusion.’”

Whether your interview is in person or virtual, Kim advises you to have questions ready ahead of time—and make them as particular as possible. If you ask the right questions, she explains, then you can learn much more than you would expect.

For instance, instead of asking “How would you describe your culture?” try posing more pointed questions, such as these:

• When someone drops the ball on a project, how does your team handle that?

• What specific efforts have been made to create an inclusive culture for underrepresented employees?

• When there is a conflict cross-functionally, how do folks resolve it?

• How does the company ensure a sense of community, even when people are working remotely?

Kim notes that you might still get vague responses. But even that is useful information. Ambiguity indicates that the company hasn’t broached the important topics you’ve raised. Though it’s not a positive sign, it’s better to know before you accept an offer. You might discover that the company culture doesn’t match the package it is trying to sell you. If its good intentions feel transactional rather than genuine, transient rather than impactful, or (even worse) serve only as a PR opportunity rather than a well-grounded policy, then that’s a red flag.

Make an Effort to Connect

All of this advice may be helpful if you’re still in the interviewing stage, but what if it’s too late for that? What if you’re reading this chapter and have already accepted the job offer? You can still decode your new company’s culture now—even if you’re remote.

Lauren Pasquarella Daley, the senior director of the Women and the Future of Work initiative at Catalyst, told me that remote employees should intentionally seek out information by creating opportunities to connect with others once they’re hired. (For more on being a new remote employee, see the article “Starting a New Job Remotely”.)

“Some organizations will have robust remote onboarding procedures in place, while others may need a few nudges to provide a more inclusive onboarding experience for new employees,” she says.

Before your first day, ask these questions:

• Are there any handbooks, sources of online training, or other resources that can help me get a head start and learn more about the company?

• What social platforms is the organization active on?

• Is there a team member who might want to pair up with me as a remote onboarding buddy? (In other words, is there a peer who can teach you about the unwritten rules and norms of the organization?)

“Finally, remember that it is always OK to ask if you need more information or more support,” Daley adds. “Building inclusion and equity is important whether someone is in a physical office or working remotely. Small, spontaneous, and frequent social interactions can help create connections in an office—these should still happen when working remotely but may take more intentionality.”

No matter what position you find yourself in, use these tips to spot the work cultures that will—and will not—work for you. The company you ultimately choose should enable you to flourish rather than wear you (or your well-being) out.

Kristi DePaul is a Tel Aviv–based entrepreneur and content marketing expert whose writing empowers aspiring professionals to succeed in the ever-changing landscape of work. Her articles have appeared in top international publications, including HBR’s 10 Must-Reads 2024, and have been cited by leading think tanks and academicians. She serves as CEO of Founders, a globally distributed content agency that supports educational and workforce development organizations around the world. A longtime proponent of working from anywhere, Kristi has been named an international Remote Innovator by Remote and remains an advocate for enhancing others’ social and economic mobility through location-independent employment.