How to Avoid the Trap of Choosing the Wrong Company
Not all cultures are created equal
If you are someone who wants to do the best for your clients, make a difference and truly deliver exceptional customer service, then you need to choose where you invest your time and energy wisely.
If you don’t, based on my personal experience and that of working with thousands of professionals who are unhappy at work, I can tell you that it won’t end well.
What starts as an irritation will grow into grains of sand that grind your gears to the point of becoming what neuroscientists call “activated”.
It happens in a work context when your neurology perceives a threat to success, often through a clash of values related to professionalism, quality, authenticity and integrity – all things that matter highly to anyone who wants to achieve.
Once you witness an organisation failing to walk its professed talk of caring for clients, it creates a lens of dissatisfaction through which everything you see is filtered.
At this point, you have three choices: fight, capitulate or leave.
When you choose to fight for what you know is right, it’s because you understand the importance and wisdom of delivering high-quality support and services. Effectively, you believe in the cause.
In this scenario, like the sand in the gears, it will wear you down over time. What starts as an irritation often ends up with you raising a grievance depending on how your managers respond to you wanting to change the status quo.
In this scenario you may find yourself being engineered out through a fake restructuring for being perceived as a troublemaker. This is the sentence handed down for caring too and wanting to be professional in a culture which pays lip service only to the concept.
Watch out in particular if you have a boss who loves power while you love achievement. That’s like mixing oil and water – and power likes to win!
Of course, you could always hunker down and go with the cultural flow.
If you are an achiever, this is the equivalent of pouring weed killer on your soul – it starts to wilt. As your soul wilts, your light dims, and with it, your self-belief and confidence too – unless you change jobs.
There is another way
Take the time to thoroughly investigate the company culture using your normal research approach as well as both your personal connections and LinkedIn networks. If quality and excellence matter to you, then look for award-winning companies where the employees rave about the culture and opportunity on sites such as the Best Awards or Great Place to Work.
Use sites like Glassdoor, the TripAdvisor for employees, to help you to double-check the reality of the company pitch in action. It’s worth bearing in mind that there are poor employees too, of course, who can be disgruntled and vitriolic in their reviews, so be measured in your analysis of what is said, particularly if some of these reviews sound like outliers compared with the others.
One final check
Ask about the culture at the interview, and when interviewers reply, listen and watch their response. Hearing what is unsaid and seeing where there is a lack of congruence between the spoken word and physiological reaction speaks volumes.
It will save you aeons of frustration, pain and disappointment – and you will be glad you checked it out before joining.
© Carolyn Parry 2025