Check employer background, too.(BUSINESS)(Work & Life)

Turnabout is fair play.
Potential bosses have access to a lifetime of information on job applicants, through application forms, reference checks and background searches.
It's harder - but just as important - for job applicants to check out the place that might employ them.
The expanding job market makes this step extra important these days, because the odds are better that there is more than one job offer out there. But anyone who has ever taken the wrong job will caution job-seekers to always be smart - and as choosy as possible - about sizing up an offer.
The best detective work combines the newest resources on the Internet and the oldest strategy in job searches - reaching out to your network of friends, family, colleagues and maybe your fellow altos in the church choir.
These are your sources for basic facts about a prospective company, maybe some insider perspectives, and even some hard lessons from those who went before you - in their "Don't do what I did" or "I just wish I had" stories.
For the factual part of the search, start with the employer's website. Look past the self-promotion and you can learn a lot about a company, career counselors said.
Most have information about job openings, products and services, customers and even government filings - under shareholder services. It's crucial that you know the whole company, not just the department or location where you might work, said Tina Wagner, associate director of the career development office at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul.
"Maybe they're hiring in sales but they're laying off people in IT and corporate communications - often seen as non-revenue-generating departments," she said. That might or might not be a sign of real trouble in the company, but you can expect to walk into some morale problems, she said.
For other, objective resources, several counselors recommended http://www.hoovers.com and the James J. Hill Reference Library in downtown St. Paul.
Beyond that, search for any recent articles on the company in the general and the business press, the counselors advised. It might have just found the cure for cancer or been sued for sex discrimination.
Try not to scatter your energy. Figure out your "nonnegotiables" in a job, Minneapolis career counselor Joan Poritsky said. Most people have about five, and they could be looking for such things as a commitment to diversity, a practice of internal advancement or a family-friendly culture.
If a company touts itself as family-friendly, but its parking lot is still full when you drive by at 7 p.m., find out why, Portisky advised.
Along the same lines, if you're launching a job search, pick the eight to 10 companies you want to pursue, said Kathy Andrus, vice president of career management services in the Edina office of Right Management Consultants.
Then you can get right to the point - both in job interviews and your calls to your network of contacts.
For contacts, you depend on six degrees of separation. The only way to reach into a company is to talk to someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know.
The more people you know, the more chance you have of finding that inside connection. Andrus recommends checking out the many metro-area job clubs. A lot of them meet in state workforce centers, churches and synagogues, even though they're secular. St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie is popular, Andrus said. The Smiling and Dialing Club is one that concentrates on senior-level jobs, she said.
St. Olaf College in Northfield maintains a database of alumni and their places of employment, career connections director Pat Smith said. They welcome calls, Smith said: "It's an expectation at a small college, and probably the best way to hear something firsthand."
Try open-ended questions that don't put your contact in the awkward position of having to say good or bad things about the company, Wagner advised. For example: Could you describe the corporate culture to me? What have you found rewarding there? Where do you see the company going?
Learn from others' hindsight, the counselors said.
The two most common regrets Andrus hears are: I wish I hadn't taken the first thing that came along. And, I wish I had been less grateful and more forceful in negotiating terms - like one more week of vacation a year.
Another career expert spoke of her own mistake: She took a job for a lot more money, but she walked into the middle of a restructuring and four months later her department disappeared and her job with it. She was hired so quickly, she said, it didn't feel quite right at the time. "I wish I'd listened to my gut," she now says.
It helps if you avoid all-or-nothing thinking, said Morgan Kinross-Wright, director of the undergraduate career center at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.
"I'm not advocating that students turn down jobs just because they don't get everything they want," Kinross-Wright said. "But I tell them, `If you're strategic and you're dedicated, you can get another offer. It's never absolute, and you never have only one choice.'-"
What are your workplace issues? You can reach H.J. Cummins at workandlife@startribune.com. Please sign your e-mails; no names will appear in print without prior approval.