Résumé reviewing a company you are interested in

If you are interested in working for company X, my suggestion is to quickly research and assemble a résumé for the company.  A kind of  "Things I know about X".  Here is the kind of data that I would look for basically in 3 categories: financials, people, operations.

Financials

• how well funded are they?


• how long will the funding last?


• what is the company financial history?


• profitablity?


• cash flow? (exact amounts are often hard to find for non-publically quoted companies, but quotes from execs can sometimes reveal ballpark figures or direction

People

• who are the principal officers of the company? CEO, CFO, CIO, Engineering, etc


• track record: what previous experience and success have they had


• how relevant are they? (would other companies want to hire them)


• career opportunities?


• employees past and present: blogged/videoed experiences?  what about? how fun it is? any problems?

Company operations and growth

• what has their growth been like?


• who are their competitors?


• who do they collaborate with?


• who are their customers?


• how do their projects and services rate about their competitors?


• size: people, offices, etc : check old webpages about size, office openings (indicates zero people then), news etc


• interesting facts?


• photos/graphics? to get a feel of the style, position, workplace enviroment etc.  Can also help with familiarization and visualization

A one page summary of these facts will help you assess whether the company really is right for you at this time or the future.

If you end up interviewing with company X you can use it as background - your knowledge will come in handy and may even impress them with your thoroughness and pragmatism ;-)

Perhaps I should start my own public repo of "company résumé"s to help folk.