How to Choose a Company to Work For

Solution: Look at the details, not just the big picture

Isn’t it interesting that I didn’t say to look at the big picture.

Of course you should consider the big picture. The ultimate goal of your career, the skills and experience you will develop at the next company, how that role will build your resume and improve your career.

All of that is important.

I am going to assume you have already made those considerations.

Now you have a short list of companies that you want to work for. They will all improve your career and build the skills and experience you want to improve.

Now you need to get picky on the details that affect your immediate life.

When I interview for a new job, and also when I am researching a company to work for, I ask questions about the way the company does things:

Things like:

• What systems they use (email, document management, project management etc)
• The training systems used
• Project management support (such as a good project management office)

I also ask about the job conditions, such as:

• Work location
• Hours expected and method of recording overtime
• Other benefits such as superannuation, sick leave etc.

The interesting work and pay are secondary to these (I wouldn’t be contacting the company if the pay and work were not in my general expectations of course).

Let’s assume you have built a number of years of experience in your field or industry. You can expect a certain level of pay, and you are not desperate for just any job. Nor are you struggling financially, where the pay is the most important consideration in your decision.

I suggest that pay should not be your number one priority, but that you focus on the things that will make the job more enjoyable for you and give you a better lifestyle.

At this stage I believe your most important consideration should be efficiency of time.

You want to waste as little time as possible in preparing for and travelling to work, and in your time at work.

Office Location

Travel time from your home:

Travelling 15 minutes or less in each direction is ideal. The longer you travel the less time you have with your family, friends, self development, business building, exercise, or hobbies. 

For someone commuting from the suburbs to the CBD they might travel 1 to 1.5 hours each way. That could be 2 to 3 hours of lost time each day. 

Of course if you get to sit on the train that whole way you could use that time for reading or self development. If driving, you could listen to podcasts etc. But that would not give you as much freedom or efficiency as being able to do that at home (unless you have a noisy household, then maybe the train journey will be your only quiet time. I know some people who say that is the most productive time of their day).

Depending on your industry, you may not have many choices of jobs a short distance from where you live. If that is the case, make sure you can make your travel time productive (such as choosing a job that has good train access, so you can work, read or study while traveling).

If you get to choose between two similar jobs and one has a short travel time and one has a long travel time, I highly recommend the closer one. The time saved adds up so much over a year and over many years that it can add up to the equivalent of weeks or months of work related time saved per year. That is a lot of time you could instead spend with family, friends, education or self improvement.

For example, if you travel for 2 hours per day to and from work, instead of 30 minutes, then you are losing 90 minutes per day. If you work 240 days per year, that adds up to 360 hours lost time (equivalent to 9 weeks of work if you do a 40 hour work week). Imagine having 9 weeks extra leave.

Physical Location of the Workplace:

Distance from your home is important, but so is the location of the office or work site. If the office is on a busy noisy street corner, you may have a lot of intrusive noise or pollution that will affect your work and your health.

Consider also the benefits and detractors of moving location completely (i.e. moving house) to a different city or region. Some regions will have a lot lower cost of living (usually due to housing costs) for only a small reduction in pay. After rent or mortgage repayments, your pay might end up better at a different location. Of course you should still consider the location of your family. If you have children, availability of babysitting from the children’s grandparents is a big factor.

The business systems used by the company:

Most people I meet (and I also used to as well) choose the company they work for based on the pay, the experience it will give you, or the interesting work it offers. This may be necessary early in your career, but I believe that once you can, you should choose a company based on the systems they use and the decreased stress that good systems will offer. (Remember, at this stage you are comparing companies that all offer the pay and work you expect).

A company may look great to work for from the outside, but the systems they use and the efficiencies they have (or don’t have) can have a big impact on your productivity, job satisfaction, and general sense of accomplishment or waste of time on the job.

Bad, inefficient systems waste your time. In some companies, you could spend more than half your time doing useless bureaucratic tasks that could be automated. This can wear you down mentally, as you will know that much of your work is pointless and a waste of time.

Document Management:

It is very useful to ask the company what document management system they use and if it can store documents in sub-folders, be easily searched etc, If a company doesn’t have a good system in place you may find yourself spending a lot of time sorting, filing, and searching for documents or emails that should be nearly automated. 

A bad company system for document storage, management and display can cause a lot of stress and difficulty. A good system will make finding any document very easy, will allow documents to be sent to others via a very small link (not a huge long hyperlink or by sending the actual file), and will be very fast and efficient. However many companies just use file explorer in windows or a badly setup and managed SharePoint system.

Email storage:

Lots of companies, especially government owned companies, require that all “important or relevant” emails are stored in the project folder for future auditability.

Yet many of these same companies don’t have an automated email storage system. They require staff to manually store each email in SharePoint or a similar document storage system or lodge it manually in a slow system. 

I have been in companies where it would take one to two minutes to store each email, so hardly anyone ever did it. No one was compliant with the required document and email retention requirements and so were at risk of personal and company penalties if they were audited.

Instead, it would be better if the company has a system which saves every outgoing email to a project or department folder (which you would choose from a quick drop down menu).

Make sure to ask how documents and emails are stored and managed, what system is used, and what automation processes the company has in place to reduce the time required to comply with those requirements. Not having a good system can lead to a lot of frustration and wasted time, leading you to hate your job.

Timesheets:

Timesheets are required in some way in most companies. Some companies have systems that are very quick and easy to use. Yet some companies have complicated systems which take a long time to fill out. I have even seen some companies which have two or even three timesheets that need to be completed. One for HR, one for finance and sometimes one for external clients.

Will you be wasting a lot of time each week doing complicated timesheets? If so, that is another item that will reduce your productivity and just plain annoy you.

Workflow and task management systems.

Some companies do everything with spreadsheets and emails. Sometimes lots and lots of spreadsheets and email. See my post on why project management software is better than spreadsheets.

I have been in some jobs where all the communications, directions, task allocation, requests for information etc are by email. It feels like death by email. The only way to communicate (in written form) is by emails. This means that many of your requests or information you send to others gets overlooked or lost, and the same happens when you receive emails.

A better system is one that uses a good project management or task management system, such as Blue, Teamwork.com, Monday, or Nifty. These systems allow the users to communicate more efficiently, allocate tasks to people or change those tasks to others, and so much more.

A good Project Management system (such as a cloud based system like Blue or similar) can make a huge difference in your work efficiency. 

It needs to enable you to allocate, manage and track workflow and tasks.

It can make the difference between enjoying your work because the systems are easy to use and make the PM role seem easy, compared to your PM role being cumbersome, hard work, and requiring lots of wasted time due to a poor or absent PM system.

A system you are already familiar with and find efficient is ideal. I prefer a company that uses a well supported cloud based system used by many companies over one that is too highly customised and used by very few companies. A cloud based system used by many companies means that it will be getting constant improvements and any errors or failures will be quickly reported and addressed.

Lack of a good system wastes your time and may mean that you need to do a lot of extra work hours to achieve what you could previously do in less time.

If the systems are bad, prepare for a lot of frustration and wasted time instead of job satisfaction and successful delivery of projects.

Bad systems also put your job at risk because the company will be at risk of being beaten in the market by more efficient companies.

If the company constantly has projects that go over budget or over schedule there is a good chance they don’t have a good project management system in place.

The absence of a good project management system can mean that you and your team cannot keep track of project work properly. This can lead to many problems related to budgets, schedule and scope, but can also lead to safety and compliance issues. This sometimes puts not just the company, but you personally at financial and negligence risk.

Unpaid Overtime:

Many professional companies have no set hours, but have standard office hours of 40 hours per week. There is an expectation (and often a clause in the employment contract) that you are expected to do that minimum 40 hours per week plus whatever other hours are necessary to complete the work.

Do your research of the company regarding this. A little bit extra here and there or a lot more hours for short stints (a few weeks maximum) to achieve completion of a critical project are reasonable. But an expectation of continually doing a lot more than the standard hours is stealing time away from your family, hobbies, career, personal development, professional development, and also from sleep. You should count the cost of this time, and make sure you understand your real pay per hour. The annual salary at some companies might look much better than others, but the pay per hour could work out to be a lot less.

Be extra careful of jobs where you will be expected to prepare project proposals for clients (i.e. proposals/bids to win work). Many companies don’t allow you to book those hours to recognised cost codes but instead use a general non-billable code. In some cases those bidding hours won’t be recognised as counting towards your “utilisation”. So you may find you need to do your normal project work (which counts towards utilisation) and do proposals in extra time. Some companies require utilisation to be kept above 80%, meaning you may need to do 32 hours minimum of your normal work, and then do proposal work after that (which could be another 20 hours). 

You may also find that working on proposals never ends until the job is won. I.e. there will be an expectation that you work many hours at proposals until a project is won for you to work on. If you join a company that has some specific projects for you to work on you will probably be fine, but if there are none for you yet you may find yourself doing much more than the standard 40 hours per week.

I believe you should aim for a consistent 40 hour week (with occasional extra time), and use the extra time to develop yourself. Rather than donating it to your company.

Some companies have a set 38 or 40 hour week and anything you work above that gets banked towards your leave. That is an ideal situation, because it means that if you need to work some long hours (such as during big reporting times, or during project commissioning) you can do that and know that you can take time off later to make up for it, without having to seek permission to do so. Not many companies have this arrangement, but if it does, make sure you take that into serious consideration. 

I have worked in some companies where 50 hours was the normal time required to get the job done (even though I was paid for a 40 hour week). If you are paid $2,000 per week and do 50 hours, that is $40 per hour. Whereas if you only had to do 38 hours, that is over $52 per hour.

Small or Large Company

There are advantages both ways with working for small or large companies.

I find that small companies will give you a lot more control and authority over your project. You will get to know your colleagues and project teams better, and there will be a lot less bureaucracy slowing your work down. They are also often more willing to try new things or change things that are not working (and can do so relatively quickly).

On the other hand larger companies often pay more, and have more opportunities to travel or transfer to other cities or countries within that company. They may have more training available and may also have more support systems and teams available (like accounting, finance, payroll, HR, Safety, QA etc). 

I find that larger companies have more bureaucracy and more systems to follow and that small companies will have less systems and more freedom.

I also find that many large companies won’t allow you to use online cloud based Project Management systems (Blue, Monday, Teamwork.com, Nifty etc) whereas smaller companies can be more open to that. This is often due to the legacy systems that large companies have, and that they have to have a consistent system across all their regional locations and divisions (often made by amalgamating companies over many years). 

Sometimes it is a case of security and bureaucracy (large company) vs less security but more freedom (small company). 

A very small company where the owner is the manager, can give you great freedom to manage your projects the way you want and to get things done. A very large company (many thousands of people) will have a lot of reporting requirements, due to its management structure, shareholders etc.

There are of course ranges in this. Some large companies have excellent systems that significantly reduce the bureaucracy challenge, and some small companies have terrible systems that they force you to use. But generally, the smaller the company, the easier it is to change systems to make them work efficiently.