Interview-Startrampe • Anfänger⏱️ 12 Min. Lesezeit
Company Research Strategies
Company Research Strategies
Walking into an interview without researching the company is like turning up to a first date without knowing their name. You might still make a good impression, but you are making it unnecessarily hard. Candidates who demonstrate genuine knowledge about a company's tech stack, challenges, and culture consistently outperform those who give generic answers. This lesson shows you exactly where to find that insider knowledge and how to use it.
Why Company Research Matters
Interviewers can tell within five minutes whether a candidate has done their homework. Research matters because:
It improves your answers — you can tailor behavioural stories to match the company's values
It informs your system design — knowing the company's scale and constraints makes your designs more relevant
It demonstrates genuine interest — which differentiates you from candidates who mass-apply
It helps you ask better questions — smart questions at the end of an interview leave a lasting impression
It protects you — research helps you identify companies you should avoid
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Company research is not about flattery. Do not walk in and say "I love your company's mission." Walk in and say "I read your engineering blog post about migrating to Kubernetes, and I noticed you chose Istio for service mesh — I would love to hear how that has worked at scale." That is the difference between a candidate and a prepared candidate.
Where to Find Real Company Information
Engineering Blogs
The single best source of insider technical knowledge. Most mid-to-large tech companies publish engineering blogs:
Netflix Tech Blog — distributed systems, data engineering, chaos engineering
Check the company's public GitHub organisation. This reveals:
Tech stack — what languages, frameworks, and tools they actually use
Open-source contributions — what projects they maintain and value
Code quality standards — look at their contribution guidelines and code review practices
Active projects — what they are currently investing engineering effort in
Conference Talks and Podcasts
Search YouTube for "[Company Name] engineering talk" or "[Company Name] tech conference." Engineers who give conference talks tend to be senior, and their presentations reveal:
Architecture decisions and the reasoning behind them
Challenges they are currently solving
The way they think about trade-offs
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According to a survey by Hired, 78% of engineering managers said they are "significantly more impressed" by candidates who reference specific technical decisions the company has made. Yet fewer than 15% of candidates do this level of research.
Glassdoor and Blind
These platforms give you the unfiltered employee perspective:
Glassdoor Interview Reviews — real candidates describe what questions were asked, the difficulty level, and whether they received an offer
Glassdoor Company Reviews — understand the culture from people who actually work there
Blind — anonymous, verified employees discuss compensation, culture, team dynamics, and interview tips
Filter for recency — reviews older than 12-18 months may not reflect the current environment
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an underrated research tool:
Company page — recent news, announcements, and growth trajectory
Employee profiles — look at the backgrounds of people in your target role; what skills and experiences do they share?
Your interviewer — if you know who will interview you, check their profile for shared interests, published articles, or open-source work
Team composition — how large is the team? Is it growing or stable?
Job Description Archaeology
Search for other open roles at the same company. If they are hiring 5 backend engineers and 2 DevOps engineers, they are probably scaling their infrastructure. If they have 3 ML engineer openings, AI is a strategic bet.
🧠Kurzer Check
Which source provides the most reliable technical insight into a company's actual tech stack and engineering practices?
Understanding Company Values
Every company has stated values, and most use them as a framework for behavioural interviews.
Amazon's Leadership Principles
Amazon explicitly evaluates candidates against their 16 Leadership Principles. The most commonly tested:
Customer Obsession — "Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer"
Ownership — "Describe a time you took on something outside your responsibility"
Dive Deep — "Tell me about a time you used data to make a decision"
Bias for Action — "When did you make a decision without complete information?"
Google's Hiring Signals
Google evaluates four core attributes:
General Cognitive Ability — problem-solving, not just IQ
Leadership — emergent leadership, not just positional authority
Role-Related Knowledge — technical competence for the specific role
Googleyness — intellectual humility, conscientiousness, comfort with ambiguity
Smaller Companies
Even if a company does not publish formal values, you can infer them from:
Their "About" and "Careers" pages
The CEO's public communications or blog posts
How they describe themselves in job descriptions
Their approach to open source, community, and transparency
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Think about it:Think about a company you are interested in. Can you name their top 3 values without looking them up? If not, that is your first research task. Those values will directly shape the behavioural questions you face.
Researching Your Interviewer
If you know who will interview you (the recruiter sometimes shares this), spend 10 minutes researching:
Their LinkedIn profile — role, tenure, background
Published articles or talks — this gives you conversation starters
GitHub contributions — if they are active, you can reference their work
Shared connections — mutual contacts can provide warm insights
A word of caution: use this knowledge subtly. Saying "I noticed we both worked at Company X" is natural. Saying "I read all 47 of your LinkedIn posts" is unsettling.
Building a Company Research Template
Use this template for every company you target:
## [Company Name] Research Notes
### Basic Facts
- Industry:
- Size (employees):
- Stage (public / Series X):
- Engineering team size:
- Key products:
### Tech Stack
- Languages:
- Frameworks:
- Cloud platform:
- Databases:
- Notable tools:
### Engineering Culture
- Engineering blog highlights:
- Open-source projects:
- Conference talks:
- Development methodology:
### Values and Interview Style
- Published values:
- Interview format (from Glassdoor):
- Common question themes:
- What interviewers care about:
### My Angle
- Why I am interested (genuine reasons):
- What I bring that is unique:
- Stories that align with their values:
- Questions I want to ask:
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Spend 30-45 minutes filling out this template for each company. It feels like a lot upfront, but it directly translates into better answers, better questions, and a stronger impression. Save your completed templates — they compound across multiple applications.
Tailoring Your Stories to the Company
Once you understand a company's values, map your prepared stories to them:
Example: Amazon Interview Prep
You have a story about debugging a critical production issue. Here is how to frame it for Amazon:
Customer Obsession: "Customers were experiencing 500ms latency spikes, so I prioritised fixing it over my current sprint work..."
Dive Deep: "I traced the issue through three microservices and identified that our connection pooling was configured incorrectly..."
Ownership: "Even though the service was technically owned by another team, I took responsibility because the customer impact was immediate..."
The same story. Three different framings. Each one optimised for a specific Leadership Principle.
Example: Startup Interview Prep
For a startup, the same story might emphasise:
Resourcefulness: "We did not have a dedicated SRE team, so I built monitoring dashboards from scratch..."
Speed: "I identified and fixed the root cause within 4 hours, and deployed the fix the same day..."
Impact: "This reduced our P99 latency by 60% and directly improved our retention metrics..."
🧠Kurzer Check
You are preparing for an Amazon interview. What is the most effective way to use their Leadership Principles in your preparation?
Questions That Impress Interviewers
Your research powers the questions you ask at the end of each round. Great questions demonstrate insight:
"I read your blog post about migrating from monolith to microservices. What was the hardest part of that transition that the post did not cover?"
"I noticed your team open-sourced [project]. What drove that decision, and how has it affected internal development?"
"Your JD mentions event-driven architecture. Are you using Kafka, and if so, how do you handle schema evolution?"
"I saw the team grew from 5 to 15 engineers in the last year. How has that affected your development processes?"
Avoid questions that you could answer with a 30-second Google search. Never ask "What does the company do?" or "What programming languages do you use?"
🤔
Think about it:Draft three questions you would ask at a company you are targeting. For each one, note what research it is based on and what signal it sends to the interviewer about your preparation level.
Key Takeaways
Engineering blogs and GitHub repos are your best sources of genuine technical insight — read 3-5 posts per target company.
Company values directly shape behavioural questions — map your stories to the values before the interview.
Research your interviewer when possible — shared context creates natural rapport.
Use the research template for every company to ensure consistent, thorough preparation.
Your questions reveal your preparation — ask questions that prove you have done the work.