Company research before your interview, in one sheet that ends in answers

How to use this company research worksheet

1. Type the company and press Start research. Any name works, and so does a link to its careers page. Add your role if you know it; it picks the right questions and fills the search links.
2. Read What we know. For a company in our data you see what our practice questions for your role cover, the three to practice first and the page with every answer frame. For any other company, or a role outside our seven, you see the question pages for your own role first. For every company there is a brief box: paste its About page and keep its own sentences about what it does.
3. Fill the research sheet. Six steps, each with the pages to open and two or three boxes for what you find. Short notes are enough. The counter shows how many steps have notes.
4. Press Build my answers. Your notes become an answer to "Why this company?", an answer to "What do you know about us?" and five questions to ask. Edit them in place, or press Make it sound natural for an AI version that rewords them from your notes only. Add the interview date to save it all to your job tracker or your calendar, with a reminder the day before to say the answers out loud.

Everything is saved in this browser as you type. Come back the evening before the interview and your notes are where you left them. The one step that sends anything is the optional AI button: it sends your notes and answers to us to write the new version, and that is saved to your ClapAssist history, which you can delete anytime.

What our interview data covers, and what it does not

The tool reads our own question bank. 25 companies have 7 roles each, from software engineer to product manager and campus hire, which makes 175 question pages and 1,400 practice questions. Every question was written by us for that company and role, and its page gives what the interviewer checks, an answer frame and a sample answer. They are practice questions, not a list of what a company asked last month; questions people tell us they were really asked appear on their own, marked Reported. Interviewed there already? Add the questions you were asked from the first step of the tool (a person reads each one before it is shown, and your name never is), or search every question we have in the interview question bank.

For each company the tool also links its official pages: careers, how it says it hires where it publishes that, its investor or about pages and its newsroom. We opened each of these links by hand on October 3, 2026; a page we could not open is left out, and the step falls back to a search.

There are no salary bands, star ratings, weekly hours or layoff counts here. We have no source for those numbers that we can name and keep current, so the tool does not guess them. For pay, compare two recent sources for the same title, level and city, then use the salary expectations answer generator to put the range into words.

The companies, and their question pages

How do you research a company before an interview?

Work from the company's own words outward. Each step below answers one thing the interviewer is likely to test, and the sheet above has a box for each.

1. The careers page and how they hire

Many large employers publish their hiring steps and their values. Write down the steps in their words, and the two values that fit your own story best. If the page says the team reviews a take-home task, you know to keep one example of written work ready.

2. What they sell, to whom, and what is growing

For a listed company, the annual report and the latest results say where the money comes from in plain sections. For a private one, the product pages and the pricing page do the same job. One sentence each: what they sell, who pays, and what is new.

3. One recent change, with its date

A launch, a new market, a new leader, a reorganization. Read the article, not only the headline, and note when you saw it. Quoting old news as new is worse than quoting none.

4. The job post, line by line

The post is the closest thing to the interviewer's checklist. List the must-haves, then write one line of proof for each: something you did, with a result. A must-have with no proof is the gap to prepare for.

5. The people

Read the public profiles of the hiring manager and of two people on the team, if you can find them. Note what they work on and one thing you would like to ask. Do not mention personal details in the interview; mention the work.

6. The product

Use it for ten minutes if it is open to the public. One thing you liked and one question it raised make a stronger answer than anything you can read about it.

How do you research a company that is not on this list?

The same four questions work for any employer, from a bank to a ten-person startup. Look for each answer in a place the company cannot fully control, and note the date you saw it.

1. What does it sell, and to whom? Read the product pages and try the product if you can. For a listed company, the latest annual report or investor page says where the money comes from and what is growing.
2. What changed this year? Search the company name with "news" and read the last few months: funding, layoffs, a new leader, a new market. Interviewers notice when you know.
3. How do they hire? The job post names the must-haves. Employee review sites and forum threads often list the rounds; trust a pattern seen in several recent posts, not one story.
4. What does the role pay? Compare at least two recent sources for the same title, level and city, and keep base pay apart from bonus and stock.

Type such a company into the tool as it is: the sheet's links then search for its careers page, its investor or about pages, its news and its people on LinkedIn. Paste its About page into the brief box on the first step, and the tool keeps the company's own sentences about what it does, its mission and where it is based, with the link and the date, so you quote the company and not a guess.

A worked example

Press See an example to load it. The company is made up, so nothing in it can go out of date. The notes, in short: Maple Lane Grocers delivers groceries from neighborhood stores to families who order every week; it started same-day delivery in three new towns; one value it names is "Fresh food for every street"; the data analyst post asks for SQL first; the candidate built a weekly sales dashboard that twelve store managers use. From those notes the tool writes:

Why this company? What draws me to Maple Lane Grocers is the work itself: groceries delivered from neighborhood stores, for families who order every week. I read that they started same-day delivery in three new towns, and I want to work on changes like that. I also connect with how you describe your values, especially "Fresh food for every street". As a data analyst with two years in retail reporting, I fit what the role asks for: the job needs SQL, and I built the weekly sales dashboard that our twelve store managers use. When I tried it myself, I liked that the app shows the delivery time before you pay. That is why I want this data analyst role at Maple Lane Grocers in particular, not just any job like it.

What do you know about us? From what I have read, the main work at Maple Lane Grocers is groceries delivered from neighborhood stores, and your customers are families who order every week. Right now same-day delivery in smaller towns looks like where you are growing. Recently, they started same-day delivery in three new towns. For this team, the job post puts SQL first, and from the team pages I found, the hiring manager leads delivery analytics. That is where I can help: I built the weekly sales dashboard that our twelve store managers use.

And among the five questions to ask: “I read that they started same-day delivery in three new towns. How has that changed the work of this team?”

Every fact in the answer is one the candidate wrote down. Where a note is missing, the answer keeps a gap in [brackets] and names the box that fills it.

How do you answer "What do you know about our company?"

Use four short parts. First, what the company does and for whom, in your own words. Second, one or two things you learned that are recent or specific. Third, what the job post says this team needs. Fourth, the thing you have done that matches it. That is the order the tool's second answer follows.

Keep it under a minute. The interviewer is not testing your memory of the founding year; they want to hear that you understand the business well enough to do the job inside it. The why do you want to work here answer generator writes another version of the "Why us?" answer from one company detail and what in the role fits you, if you want a choice.

Common mistakes, and what to do instead

• Reading only the home page. It is written for customers, not candidates. Read the careers page and the job post first; they are written for you.
• Praise with no fact behind it. "You are a leader in innovation" says nothing. "You started same-day delivery in three towns" says you read something this month.
• Old news told as new. Keep the date with every fact you note, and check it again the day before.
• Questions the careers page already answers. Ask about the work, the team and what changed after the news you read.
• Research that never reaches your answers. Notes help only if they show up in what you say. That is why this sheet ends in three answers, not in a page of notes.

Turn the research into interview answers

Research only helps if it shows up in what you say. Use the product and the year's news in your answer to "Why this company?"; the why do you want to work here answer generator builds that answer from your notes. Bring the pay range you checked to the salary expectations answer generator so you can name a range without guessing. For the technical rounds, practice the questions people report, such as these Google software engineer interview questions.

Watch for warning signs as you read: many recent reviews that describe the same problem, a role that has been posted again and again, or rounds that change from one candidate to the next. Each is worth one calm question at the end of the interview.

The full preparation plan, with the job description and resume steps, is in the interview preparation guide. To practice saying the answers out loud, use the AI mock interview.

Questions people ask