Companies, teams, and products, all evolve with time. Some evolve right out of existence. Job seekers whose former employers and their branding no longer exist due to merger, rebranding, acquisition, failure, or some combination thereof face a special challenge in presenting their experience as relevant to new opportunities.
When former brands and digital footprints disappear, prospective employers can find it challenging to validate someone’s experience. Job seekers can spend just as much time and effort introducing their former companies and what went wrong as they spend talking about their contribution, assuming they can break through initial application process filters.
For experienced job seekers who get further and further away from those jobs that made them who they are today, it can also be a challenge to remember all the products, services, and news of our former corporate identities. Revisiting the past and your contribution to it can be an important step in building and maintaining confidence as you reach for the next opportunity.
Enter the Wayback Machine, hosted by the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that, “is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public. ” The Internet Archive began in 1996 by archiving the Internet. All of it. And they kept doing it.
Today, job seekers can go back in time via the Wayback Machine to visit the websites of their former employers and partners at a time when they were working on a specific problem, project, product or effort. The WM can be used to find artifacts that were uploaded and freely accessible, like content, logos, and other images. Links to archived sites can also be sent to prospective employers and partners to help drive home your legitimacy and relevancy.
Bonus: Flip it the other way, job seekers – use the Wayback Machine to research employers before joining them, too!
Here are a few archived websites from some of the companies I worked with, most of which no longer have companies/websites due to acquisition, merger, or retirement. In other cases, their marketing and branding may look different than when I was working with them. The links provide context and often evidence that I was there.
The snapshots were taken within a couple of years I worked with them and some include remnants of my work as a researcher, marketer, and product developer.
Elirck & Lavidge – telephone interviewer – snapshot 2000
2020 Research – interviewer, qual/quant project manager – snapshot 2000
Prince Market Research – qual/quant project manager – snapshot 2000
National Federation of Independent Business – Senior Market Research Manager – snapshot 2002
Socratic Technologies / Modalis – Panel developer, Marketer – snapshot 2000
NextMonet – Direct Marketing, Market Researcher – snapshot 2004
CFMC – Chief Operating Officer, Marketing, Market Researcher – snapshot 2006
Foris.io- Consultant, product development, marketing – snapshot 2021