Researching
Potential Employers
Using
any search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing), you can find a
wealth of information on company Web sites and in online newspapers,
magazines, and databases, including annual reports, press
releases, company histories, products and/or services, numbers
of employees, ownership, and other information that will be
invaluable during your interview.
Imagine going to an interview armed with the company’s
latest sales figures, product development ideas, opportunities,
strengths, and weaknesses. What if you knew the latest trends
and competitors in your industry? This kind of information
would give you a definite competitive advantage during the
interview.
How do you access this information? You simply type in the
keywords for your search (a company name or topic) and send
the search engine to do its job. You may have to narrow your
search if you end up with 200,000 hits, but the first few
pages of the search results should be sufficient to get you
started.
You will be much more successful finding information on public
companies than private ones, since publicly held companies
must reveal their financial information to stockholders and
to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Larger companies
make bigger waves, so you will find more information about
them in publicly accessible sources, like newspapers and industry
journals.
Begin with the company’s own Web site, but don’t
stop with their job listings. Check every section of the company’s
site for press releases, mission statement, annual report,
and awards. Make sure you leave the site with information
about the company’s personnel, history, products, basic
structure, financial health, organizational hierarchy, and
reporting structure. Pay close attention to the design of
the site, since it will tell you a little something about
their culture or philosophy—funky, young, contemporary,
cutting edge, traditional, or conservative.
It is very impressive at an interview to know what a company’s
competitors are doing, so don’t limit your search to
the company itself. Try searching by product or industry,
for example, pharmaceutical, and not just Merck or Eli Lily.
Use the following terms as your search criteria in any search
engine, and you will be amazed at the amount of inside information
you can find on a company: blog + company name (don’t
forget to use the + sign, and of course, replace the words
“company name” with the name of the company).
A number of companies even allow their employees to create
Web pages where you can learn a lot about a company’s
culture. You can send e-mail messages back and forth to these
same employees and develop networking contacts within the
company.
University archives are another incredibly rich source of
information about almost any topic. They can be accessed via
the Internet just like the company information above. Simply
search by company name or topic, and you will find everything
from information databases to student theses on almost any
subject imaginable. While searching for information on McCormick
seasonings, I recently ran across a term paper in a university
archive that covered the company’s history in great
detail. This kind of information will strengthen your performance
during an interview and help you decide whether or not a particular
company is your kind of place.
After you have researched what the company wants you to know
about itself— which is what you find at its own Web
site—do more searching to discover what other people
are saying about it as well. The following Web sites will
provide you with additional information on individual companies
and/or industries.
Company Research
AnnualReports.com
Argus
Clearinghouse
Better Business
Bureau
Corporate
Information
CorpTech Database
of 50,000 High-Tech Companies
Dow Jones
Dun & Bradstreet
Eliyon Technologies
Fortune Magazine
Hoover’s
Online
Intellifact
Research
Monster.com’s
Company Research
PRNewswire
The Public Register’s
Annual Report Service (PRARS)
RefDesk Facts
on the Net
Search
Systems/
FreeEdgar
Thomas
Register of American Manufacturers
Internet
News.Com
Vault.com
Whois.net
Yahoo Ticker
Symbol Lookup
Yahoo! Finance
Company and Fund Index
Newspapers and Other Periodicals
ABC News
American Journalism
Review
BizJournals
Anchorage Daily
News (AK)
Boston Globe
On-line (MA)
Boston
Herald (MA)
Business
Journals
CBS News
Chicago Tribune
(IL)
CNN
Dallas Morning
News (TX)
EntrepreneurMag.com
Editor
and Publisher.com
Entrepreneur.Com
Fast
Company
Fox News
Hampton
Roads Career Connection (VA)
Harvard
Business School, Baker Library, Local, and Regional Business
Publications on the Web
Houston Chronicle
(TX)
Inc. Online
Industry
Week
Los Angeles
Times (CA)
Minneapolis/St.
Paul Star Tribune (MN)
MSNBC
New York Times
News and
Newspapers Online
News Bank
News Directory
NewsCentral
Links to 3,500 Newspapers Online
Newslink
Newspapers.com
NewsVoyager.com
Time.com
U.S.
News.com
USA Today
Wall
Street Journal
Washington
Post
Worcester
Telegram (MA)
ZDNet
E-Business
International News Resources
African Business and Economy
Arab Net (Middle East and North Africa)
Asia Source
Asia-Inc.
Asian Development Bank
Canada’s Business and Consumer Site
CNN.com World News
Embassy.org
European Business Directory
JobFutures (Canada)
GoinGlobal
Hoover’s Online United Kingdom
Import-Export Bank of the United States
Inter-American Development Bank (Latin/South America)
Orientation.com
Rubicon’s Digital Passport
U.S. State Department
The World Bank Group
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