When Kathryn Minshew was 12, her family moved from Dallas to Washington, D.C. She decided she wanted to be a diplomat or an ambassador or work for the CIA. She spent years studying political science and learning different languages. Her dream became a reality in 2007 when she accepted a job at the U.S. embassy in Egkomi, Cyprus. Sadly, Kathryn discovered quickly that the job was not for her. She returned home and worked for a couple of years at McKinsey as a consultant. Following that experience, she ran a vaccine introduction program in Rwanda with the Clinton Health Access Initiative that the Gates Foundation funded. While Kathryn’s assignments were interesting, nothing stuck. She continued to think about the type of job she would like enough that would cause her to stick with it for a decade or maybe even the rest of her career. She experimented with online job boards but became frustrated by their transactional nature. It seemed to her that these boards focused only on salary and job title. Kathryn’s interest, however, was in the job’s intangibles— what does it feel like to work in a company, how do people treat each other, what is the office environment like, what is the preferred style of communication? While salary and title were important, she felt that the intangible aspects of jobs were the source of individuals’ happiness, job motivation, and productivity. To Kathryn’s disappointment, she could not find an online job site with the information that was important to her about the companies she was considering as employers. That frustration—that she could not gain access to the information that was important to her about potential employers—led Kathryn to cofound The Muse in 2007 with Melissa McCreery and Alexandra Cavoulacos. There was one other thing. Kathryn designed a blog to help women like herself in their 20s and 30s navigate their careers. She discovered that she was not the only one wanting to know more about potential employers than the job sites were providing.....

Discussion Questions:

1.The basic premise of The Muse is as follows. Every company has a different personality or culture. If you provide job-seekers information about a company’s personality or culture up-front, they are better able to select a company that aligns with their likes and values. When this is the case, employees are more likely to be happy, productive, and remain longer with their employer. To what degree does The Muse’s premise resonate with you? Do you think Kathryn Minshew is right—that people are more likely to be happy and productive and will remain longer with their employing organization when they work for a company that aligns with their values?
2.Go to The Muse’s website (www.themuse.com) and look at Meta’s section of the site (Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram). To find Meta’s section, just type Meta into the search bar and select Meta Company from the drop-down menu.
Spend some time looking at the site, listen to one or more of the employee videos, look at the photos of Meta’s offices, and so forth. Having done this, how would you characterize Meta’s culture? Do you think working at Meta would be a good fit for you? On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest), how much did you learn about working at Meta from Meta’s section on The Muse that you did not know already?
3.Put yourself in Kathryn Minshew’s shoes while she was setting up The Muse’s board of directors. If Kathryn wanted a seven-member board, what types of people (in terms of their backgrounds and experiences) do you think she would want to join The Muse’s board?
4.According to the case, determining what is truly important to you in the company you might choose to join is one of the most important tasks you can complete when looking for a job. In that spirit, describe the type of workplace that you think would align with your values and would cause you to be happy, productive, and remain with the same company for many years.