When I’ve been in the job market, like most candidates, the first thing I do is research the company or organization by looking at the mission and vision statements, recent profiled projects, and company news. But the one thing that has always given me the non-obvious peek behind the curtain is reading the bios of the executive team.

Before you read a company's mission statement to understand its culture, look at who sits in the C-suite and exactly how they got there. You have probably sat through countless town halls listening to leadership talk about agility and new perspectives, all while looking at an executive team that mirrors the exact same profile it did a decade ago.

On the ground, corporate values are not defined by the marketing copy on a careers page; they are defined by the behaviors and people an organization actively rewards with power. When we evaluate leadership composition, we are actually reading the historical record of what the company functionally incentivizes behind closed doors.

Most organizations claim to want a transformational culture, yet the pipeline reality proves otherwise: 59% of Fortune 500 C-suite roles, including 76% of CEOs, are internal promotions deeply entrenched in the legacy system. This doesn’t mean the leaders are less visionary, but it does show you what the company values.

Transformation requires friction, thinking that doesn’t align with the status quo, and accepting the risk of failure.

Without the right groundwork, you cannot transform a culture if you only ever promote the architects who built it.

This is where the view needs to be holistic, so here’s what I actually do:

  • Map the projects leadership publicly endorses. Are they transformational or incremental?
  • Identify the media sources and thought leaders they cite. Those reveal worldview.
  • Cross-check stated values against employee sentiment across platforms. Patterns matter more than singular data points.
  • Search for their public quotes on culture, workforce, and change. Their framing shows you how they think, not whether they care.

When we are actively looking for our next role, we aren’t just looking for a job; we are looking for organizational alignment with our own professional goals and values. Looking beyond the PR to the people who are in the rooms driving the decisions is the highest-leverage research you can do before you accept a job.