Walking into an interview without understanding the business is the fastest way to look like you're just collecting offers. This skill assembles a candidate's research brief — what the company does, how it makes money, where it's heading, and the challenges you'd be hired to help with — so you can speak to their reality and ask questions that signal you've done the work.
Required Inputs
Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:
- Company name (and website/ticker if helpful).
- The role you're interviewing for — so the brief focuses on what's relevant to that job.
- What you already know / found — paste any research, news, or notes you have (this skill structures and reasons over it).
Note: ground this in real, provided information. Where current facts aren't supplied, say so and mark inferences as assumptions — don't fabricate funding rounds, metrics, or news.
Output Format
Company Brief: [company] — prepping for [role]
1. What they do & how they make money — the business in plain terms: product, customers, and the revenue model. If you can't tell how they make money, that's itself worth noting.
2. Trajectory & recent news — stage, growth signals, funding/earnings, launches, leadership changes (from the info provided). Where it's clearly heading.
3. Product & competitors — the core product, who they compete with, and their differentiation (or lack of it).
4. Likely challenges — the 2–3 problems this company is probably grappling with that this role would touch. This is the gold: it's what you'll speak to in the interview.
5. Culture signals — what their site, JD, reviews, and public voice suggest about how they work (and whether you'd want to).
6. Smart questions to ask — 4–6 questions that show you understand their business and surface what you need to know (avoid generic "what's the culture like?").
7. Your angle — how to connect your background to their specific situation, in one or two lines.
Quality Checks
- Explains how the company actually makes money (or flags that it's unclear)
- Likely challenges are tied to the specific role, not generic
- Questions-to-ask are specific to this company, not reusable boilerplate
- Inferences are marked as assumptions; nothing is fabricated as fact
- Ends with a concrete "your angle" connecting the candidate to their situation
Anti-Patterns
- Do not fabricate funding, metrics, or news — work from provided info and label inferences
- Do not produce a generic company overview — focus on what matters for this role and interview
- Do not list culture platitudes — read real signals (JD tone, reviews, how they describe the work)
- Do not suggest generic questions ("what's a typical day?") — make them business-specific
- Do not skip "likely challenges" — it's the section that makes you sound like a hire, not a tourist
Based On
Interview research / company due-diligence practice for candidates (business model · trajectory · role-relevant challenges).
Example Trigger Phrases
- "Research a company for a job."
- "Prep a company brief before an interview."
- "Understand a prospective employer fast."