Finding an employer that shares your values

While great pay and benefits still matter to candidates, many would also like to work for companies that share their values. The only question is: How do you find out?

Reading reviews from former employees on sites like Fairygodboss is a good start, of course. But the following tips will help you dig a bit deeper—and give you a better sense of whether prospective employers share your values before clicking “Apply now.”

Analyze the mission statement

Mission statements can give you high-level insights into organizational values, or what a prospective employer is all about. However, there are two things to keep in mind:

•  Mission statements typically attempt to explain why a company exists and what its purpose is.
• Mission statements typically do not relate detailed information about what a company does, or how it goes about doing it.

At Johnson & Johnson, you can find all of this information—and then some—in Our Credo, which you might think of as a comprehensive accounting of the values guiding everything we do.

Finally, while you’re looking at the website of a prospective employer, you might also want to see if the company has policies in place to support work-life balance or diversity and inclusion, and how their employee benefits stack up against those of other employers, too.

Inspect corporate social responsibility initiatives

Mission statements aside, what other information might help you decide whether an employer’s values seem to coincide with your own?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can give you additional clues into what the organization is all about, or what its values might be. Again, as in the case of mission statements, CSR initiatives may not give you the whole picture, but they can at least help flesh it out.

At Johnson & Johnson, you really don’t have to look much further than our annual Health for Humanity Report to get answers in this department. The report documents the impact we’re making in the lives of people around the world, charts our progress toward key milestones and suggests some of the ways we hope to achieve our goals in the future. It should give you a clear sense of our values, and whether or not they line up with your own.

Be yourself, embrace your values, change the world

Looking for a job where you can be yourself and help change the world while working for a company that shares your values? Check out all of the ways you can join our team.

You should sign up for our global talent community, too, since it’s a great way to stay in touch and get updates about jobs that might interest you in the future.