Researching employers

Helping you to identify your priorities and find organisations which reflect your values

With numerous recruiters vying for your attention, choosing an employer can be a complex task. How do you determine if an employer - or a sector - is suited to your identity, your values and your long term aspirations? Thankfully there are a number of useful resources to help. Cambridge Careers Service aim to be impartial. We won't tell you who you should or shouldn't work for - rather we aim to give you the skills and the resources to make your own informed decisions now and through your career. 

 

More information

Windo allows you to  access and easily digest the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plans and progress of the UK’s largest organisations and graduate employers. Browse profiles and compare data of potential employers. You can watch a five minute demo of how to use the site, or click here to jump straight in. 

Read our blog post on How to find a mentally healthy workplace

Windo (above) can be used to directly compare the CSR credentials of organisations within the same sector. Does one Consultancy consume less carbon than another? Find the answers through comparitive data. 

Visual Capitalist  is an example of a site which an help differentiate organisations using a variety of crieria, using infographics

MarketLine is a huge database of sector-specific content. Sector Reports give detailed but digestible information on any conceivable sector. Browse by sector, company, location ^ more. Plus lots of interesting news reports and case studies.Access via Raven (link above). Find this and many more premium business data sources on the Cambridge Libguides website.

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre  tracks the human rights policy and performance of over 6000 companies worldwide.

Know thyself

Understanding what you want from a job - and from an employer - is a very good place to start in your career journey. It'll save you a lot of time and effort further down the line if you know what's right for you (and what's not right for you) before you start your job searching.  Its not a linear process, you're priorities will change as your career develops, and we are here to help you with the decision process.

Self-reflection will help you identify the things that matter to you most in choosing a career. Try to answer the questions below - but remember not to overthink your answers or put yourself under pressure to 'get it right'. Your thoughts and ideas are likely to change in the future. The objective here is just to think about what interests, skills and values matter to you the most now.

  • What am I good at? - think about your strengths
  • What am I interested in? - think about topics as well as tasks
  • What’s important to me? - think about your values

At any stage in your career thinking, the Self-Reflection Toolkit in Handshake will help you to reflect on past experiences, your skills and motivations in order to move forward in planning your next steps. You can use one or all of these resources at any time and we recommend that you revisit them either termly or annually as part of your career development plan.

AGCAS has produced an "Understanding your employability rights" webinar

You can find more  information on work-place rights on our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion page

Interviews are your chance to work out if an organisation is right for you. 

Here is some inspiration for things you might want to ask employers at interview