Tips On The Best Companies To Work For So You Can Thrive

The point of this article is not to provide guidance on how to get a job at your preferred employer. There's plenty of that kind of advice and courses widely available, online and elsewhere. Instead, the purpose of this article is to get into the weeds on figuring out how you know what is (or should be) that preferred employer.

Sure you have to have a solid grasp on your aptitudes and skills. That purely functional approach though could leave you in an unhappy place. Elsewhere, I've listed the elite of the best companies to work for . Anyone can do that, you have to figure out what's the best company for you to work at, based on your own disposition, preferences and compatibility.

Size Matters

Job seekers and career changers don't always take account of company size, but they really should. It can make a major difference in success and satisfaction of your work experience.

Are you more suited to working at a smaller firm? It usually has a much more hands-on focus. The working relationships you'll form will likely be much closer, almost family-like (which has two sides to it). This is not only opportunity for a close familiarity with your colleagues; you could actually know everyone with whom you work. This is a distinct work environment. An additional benefit, in the minds of many, is the chance to see the immediate payoff for your work and effort. This is something that large, impersonal firms usually can't provide -- certainly not to the same degree and in the same manner.

Though larger firms strive, and often succeed, in creating a team atmosphere within departments and divisions, the truth is that your team's success is ultimately always dependent upon the accomplishments of some other teams beyond your control and outside your shared group identity. At a small firm, the successes and the challenges are all much more immediate and tangible.

On the other hand, big companies offer advantages which the smaller ones simply cannot provide. Their greater size embodies more opportunity for organizational advancement, up the executive ladder, with all the benefits of increased responsibility, challenge and salary. Most large firms also offer options for more intensive specialization, should that be your preference. Yet, the same operational diversity of the large firm also allows you a better option to get out of a specialization which has grown stale for you, providing the option for lateral movement within the firm. This opens new career paths that don't cost you established seniority and tenure through changing employers.

And if you have any of the adventurer's spirit in you, nowadays it is common for very large companies to be involved in geographically dispersed business. Working at such a firm may offer the chance to travel and even to live in excitingly difference cultures and societies. This can be a once in a lifetime opportunity for your children to experience the world. It is common for such firms to provide language training, schooling and other forms of family support should you make such a move for the company. And of course let us not forget the bottom line: usually larger companies can provide larger salaries and almost always more extensive and valuable perks and benefits.

Structure Matters

Size of a firm though isn't the only thing that matters; you should be giving consideration to the organizational structure of a firm for whom you're considering working. How will your personal disposition fit with the structural operations of a given work experience? It can have a big impact on our success and satisfaction at work The extremes go from the regimented, tightly rule bound, hierarchy that prides itself on the precision of job description and responsibility, along with a rigorously practiced chain of command, at one end of the spectrum.

The other end of the spectrum has very differently structured companies, such as the video game producer Valve. These are businesses conceived as fluid, adaptive association arrangements. Their success depends upon very high levels of employee enterprise and innovation. Indeed, in some of these firms, such as Valve, there is no chain of command hierarchy. Initiative and responsibility are generated from within a culture of collegial collaboration, supervision and accountability.

Sometimes those who feel a more natural fit with one structure or style than another are prone to dismissive moral judgments on those attracted to the other kind. Aside of the obvious vanity in such judgments, they reveal a short-sightedness about the virtues of organizational diversity. Such different business methods exist precisely because different strokes suit different folks. The point isn't to denigrate those different than you, but to figure where in that tapestry of possibility you will fit most productively and comfortably.

Do you thrive best when your tasks are clearly delineated? Do you dislike being sideswiped by problems which you had no idea would be part of your responsibility? Do you feel anxious at the prospect of vague instructions or unclear expectations? If that's a fair description of how you function at work, you're not going to thrive in the more fluid environment of the flatter hierarchies. You'd likely only find those work environments to be stressful. No number of basketball courts and massages are going to compensate for working in an environment in which you are unable to feel satisfied or successful.

Likewise, if you're a person who gets claustrophobic in the face of authority or if strictly delineated job descriptions cramp your love for the excitement of work place improvisation and adaptation, no amount of security and stability from traditional, hierarchical firms is going to compensate for the feelings of choked creativity and spontaneity that you'll likely experience trying to work there. You need a fluid, flat structured work situation to provoke and support your boundary transgressing intellectual curiosity.

Remember, this is not about what's right and wrong or good and bad here. It's about what's right or wrong and good or bad for you. Companies of different sizes and structures possess different characteristics. Your success and satisfaction at work is much enhanced by ensuring that you're working in an environment that gets the most from and gives back the most to you. This short review has been intended to aid you in making the better choice for your own dispositions and long term success.