company-brief

Company Brief Skill

Walking into an interview without understanding the business is the fastest way to look like you're just

collecting offers. This skill assembles a candidate's research brief — what the company does, how it

makes money, where it's heading, and the challenges you'd be hired to help with — so you can speak to

their reality and ask questions that signal you've done the work.

Required Inputs

Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:

• Company name (and website/ticker if helpful).
• The role you're interviewing for — so the brief focuses on what's relevant to that job.
• What you already know / found — paste any research, news, or notes you have (this skill structures and reasons over it).

> Note: ground this in real, provided information. Where current facts aren't supplied, say so and mark inferences as assumptions — don't fabricate funding rounds, metrics, or news.

Output Format

Company Brief: [company] — prepping for [role]

1. What they do & how they make money — the business in plain terms: product, customers, and the revenue model. If you can't tell how they make money, that's itself worth noting.

2. Trajectory & recent news — stage, growth signals, funding/earnings, launches, leadership changes (from the info provided). Where it's clearly heading.

3. Product & competitors — the core product, who they compete with, and their differentiation (or lack of it).

4. Likely challenges — the 2–3 problems this company is probably grappling with that this role would touch. This is the gold: it's what you'll speak to in the interview.

5. Culture signals — what their site, JD, reviews, and public voice suggest about how they work (and whether you'd want to).

6. Smart questions to ask — 4–6 questions that show you understand their business and surface what you need to know (avoid generic "what's the culture like?").

7. Your angle — how to connect your background to their specific situation, in one or two lines.

Quality Checks

• [ ] Explains how the company actually makes money (or flags that it's unclear)
• [ ] Likely challenges are tied to the specific role, not generic
• [ ] Questions-to-ask are specific to this company, not reusable boilerplate
• [ ] Inferences are marked as assumptions; nothing is fabricated as fact
• [ ] Ends with a concrete "your angle" connecting the candidate to their situation

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not fabricate funding, metrics, or news — work from provided info and label inferences
• [ ] Do not produce a generic company overview — focus on what matters for this role and interview
• [ ] Do not list culture platitudes — read real signals (JD tone, reviews, how they describe the work)
• [ ] Do not suggest generic questions ("what's a typical day?") — make them business-specific
• [ ] Do not skip "likely challenges" — it's the section that makes you sound like a hire, not a tourist

Based On

Interview research / company due-diligence practice for candidates (business model · trajectory · role-relevant challenges).