Researching a company before the first interviews

I thought I would share something I do to prepare for my first interview with a company. I research as much useful information about the company as I can.

Back before AI, this meant doing exhaustive Google and LinkedIn searches, checking Reddit posts, X/Twitter feeds, and of course checking Glassdoor.

Well, with AI, I can go throw a contextual prompt at my preferred LLM and let it gather up all the reading information. That, and explore their website, which both well for the interview process.

Here is an example prompt (I highly recommend Gemini Deep Research):

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I have a Senior/Staff Software Engineer job interview coming up soon. I have no doubts in my ability to do well in this interview, but I still need to prepare for it. This is the culture and vibe check interview, their first round.

Here are the prep notes the <independent/staff> recruiter gave me:

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Do research on the company for me to help me learn more about them and help me prepare for the interview. Answer these questions if you can:

1) Do they compensate their people well for the level of work they do?

2) Do they honor a strong work/life balance with their employees?

3) Would working there be something I would be ok discussing with a group of elementary school children on career day?

4) What are their interviews like? What information should I know about their hiring process and technical interviews?

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What else do you all do to research a company before interviewing? Also, do you think it's too creepy to, for example, to hang a small pride flag or wear a pride shirt to the culture fit interview if you see the company heavily boasts DEI and women/LGBTQ+ equality in hiring and staffing?

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