Applying for a job through the eyes of a customer

The Problem

In the current job market how would you determine whether a company is a good fit or not?
Gone are the days where one would jump at any offer without having to think about it. Gone are the days where there was no way of knowing about the company, unless we had a friend or relative actually working there or dealing with them.

Today

The internet has revolutionized almost every aspect of human life, changing the hiring process as well, making information available in ways we’ve never seen before. Details like salary, culture, and values are available. Larger companies flaunt their facilities to attract top talent.
Companies like Blind and Glassdoor provide information, such as pay, from employees about the companies they have worked for. We can connect with current employees on social media and gather insights into a company’s culture.

My Addition

I was recently considering a customer facing position at a crypto company called Exodus . I went through all the typical sources mentioned above to try to figure out whether I would fit in the company.
Then I remembered a fairly simple rule of thumb when dealing with vendors. We would attempt to reach their customer support and register a complaint in order to get a feel for what it is like to work with them.
This provides quick feedback, allowing us to decide whether we want to deal with them or not.

Implementation

So I decided to apply this to my situation to get an idea of the companies I was looking to deal with.
I contacted 20+ companies with typical crypto issues like lost or stolen coins, forgotten seed words, And more. I expected to see a somewhat consistent response. The companies were more or less providing a similar service to the customers.
The responses were far from my expectation. The difference was drastic.

• The way to reach each company was different.
• Some companies could be contacted by anyone via email
• Others required registered accounts to post a problem
• For some companies the customer had to be logged into their application to contact the support team. The response time also varied quite a bit.
• The best company, Exodus, has a policy of sending the first response (from an actual human, not an auto response) within 10 minutes.
• Other companies did not even acknowledge the email.

Contributions

I would like to thank Bob for the inspiration to pen this & all his valued inputs.
Bob Fornal

Conclusion

To conclude I was impressed with the company that responded first, I did a few more tests until I was convinced that they were consistent and it was not a one off result.
With crypto being a relatively new field, the sheer amount of information (and misinformation) is enough to put off any customer. Having a robust and seamless approach towards addressing customer concerns is essential.
I was happy that I found such a company and proceeded with the application.
Although I did not get hired I must say I was impressed with their hiring processes as well.
I am taking an altogether different approach with #100Devs to get into tech sooner rather than later.