Would you like to know - before you took your next job instead of weeks later - whether this organization makes it hard or easy to perform well? Not only can you do so - you must!

Here, we focus on a specific slice of interviewing for a job - quickly uncovering an employer's true views about work and how you will be expected to get everything done. This could save you months of trying to figure it out on the job, after you've been hired. Yet, by narrowing the focus, a lot was left out....

You've just completed your first or second interview. They love you!

(Of course.)

Now: Ask to live a day at their place

You want a day to experience how work gets done at this company - not just hear about it in interviews. (If you're currently employed, call in sick or take a vacation day. This step is that important.)

If the interviewer refuses, or is befuddled by your request:
Warning!!! Alarm bells!

Achieving well at this workplace will probably NOT be easy

The interview process is the first of many business processes you will encounter at this organization. And if this firm is like most, all their processes have been designed to maximize the company's effectiveness, not necessarily yours. (A pattern of focusing on organizational effectiveness more often than yours will be one of the five biggest wastes of your time in this company making it harder for you to get stuff done.)

If your interviewer refuses or is confused by your request, there is a lack of flexibility in the company's processes that will probably haunt you throughout your employment there. If you join this company, the odds are good that a lot of your time and attention will be spent accommodating their way of doing things, with little or no room for them to accommodate your needs. You may wish to reconsider whether this is the employer for you.

If their response is, "Sure! When?" you could be looking at a winner!

Ask to sit in on two or three of the following activities during the day that you spend with them ...

(Focus on the activities that are most relevant to your new job. Offer to sign a non-disclosure agreement for anything you may see and hear.)

Team brainstorming session (within your own department)

Daily, weekly, or monthly team meeting where assignments are handed out

Presentation from a senior executive to mid-managers

Client sales meeting

Customer problem-solving (face to face, on the phone, or online)

	Mid-managers designing a presentation to give to senior executives
	Front-line employees meeting to discuss some directive from mid-managers
	The rollout of some big change or training effort

Six Sigma, quality, or operations review meeting

Quarterly, monthly, or weekly progress review meeting

Exit interview for someone who is voluntarily leaving the company

Interview of a prospective vendor or consultant to the company

During your day at this company you will, of course, meet with and interview your prospective manager and teammates. But you also want to go beyond those exchanges into witnessing, first-hand how this company makes decisions, how they assign work, how they problem solve, and how they use bottom-up ideas and feedback.

Keep a record of your observations.

Rank them using the following three criteria:

(You can do this by gut. But 1-10 (with 10 as "excellent") will likely clarify what your gut is telling you.)

1. How close a match between how this organization stuff done and how I'd like to work

2. How their resources matched their expectations

3. How their communication changed when meeting with, or talking about, their bosses and other "seniors"

If your rankings are between 5-10, this organization is trying to make it easy to do good work.

Close match to the way you like to work = Either a great fit just for you, or an indication that the company is flexible in how it applies its processes

Close match between their resources and their expectations = While every company is trying to do more with less, this one is realistic about what it will take to do good work, and is very focused with whatever resources it does have

Close match between how junior and senior people are treated = This company is truly focused on the work itself, and tries to minimize jumping through hoops to please its senior execs. (Communication patterns are an early warning of these types of behaviors.)

If you rank anything a  9 or 10, take whatever job they offer, quickly! This is a great place to work. However, the closer your rankings get to 5 or below, the more average the company becomes not making it hard to get things done, but not very successful in making it easy, either. Rankings of 1-5: You already know that you should not be taking this job. But if you do, don't complain about how hard it is to get stuff done. You were forewarned.

Validate your observations

Have a cup of coffee with the people who were part of those activities. Ask them if what you observed was typical of what goes on in this company. Then ask them:

How do you prefer to work? Can you do that here?

Would you change how projects are handed to you? How so?

Tell me about your boss. And your boss's boss.

What about this place frustrates you?

What's the one thing that worries you the most?

What gives you the greatest satisfaction about working here?

Click here for a list of negotiable issues.

Click here for a summary of major issues you may wish to raise - after receiving a job offer but before accepting it.

Make a decision

Within one day, you now have a snapshot of what it's really like to work in this company. Has your enthusiasm been heightened, squashed, or tempered by this reality-check? Whatever your answer, this is a fairly accurate representation of what you would have realized within the first six months in your new job.