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Guide
to Researching Companies, Industries, and Countries
Get the inside scoop on a company before you interview
there.
Want to land your dream job? Do your research. Your key resource
is information and you will not succeed in your job search without
knowledge of the companies you are interviewing with. You'll
stand a better chance of getting your foot in the door if you
study the company you're applying to. Plus, you'll impress your
interviewer with your knowledge about the job.
Here are some online resources that can help you get a handle
on companies. Take full advantage of them.
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Company Research
- The Best Sources?
- Go to your favorite search engine
(our current favorite is Google) and find the company's Web site. Most public
companies have a section of their Web sites dedicated to
investor relations and often have their annual reports online
and in downloadable form.
- Web-based Secondary Sources:
- Business
Week Online -- Company Research: a great resource
from our favorite business magazine...get information on
more than 4,000 companies, including a corporate snapshot,
related articles from the magazine, and company information
from the Vault.com and WetFeet.com -- all in one easy location.
- Hoover's Online :
Search a database of the largest and fastest-growing
public companies in the United States and the world. You
must be a subscriber to Hoover's Business Resources to access
company profiles.
- IRIN -- The Investor Relations Information Network:
a clearinghouse of annual reports, fact books, and press
releases.
- Web100 -- Big Business
on the Web: tracks the largest American and international
companies on the Web (ranked by revenue), listing these
corporations along with their Fortune500 and Global500 rankings.
Can search for companies or scroll through rankings. Links
under each company to sites that have more information about
the companies.
- Corporate Information
-- a great resource for researching companies and industries
in the United States and around the world. Search for company
and industry information -- or search by U.S. state or by
country to find companies that operate within a specific
geographic region. More than 350,000 company profiles. Free
to job-seekers.
- EDGAR Online: self-proclaimed
as "the source for today's SEC information," this
site offers both free and fee-based information.
- Securities
and Exchange Commission
: Get
information about the financial health of Publicly traded
companies.
- Wall Street Research Net (WSRN): offers a wealth of
financial/investment information about companies, including
financial ratios, stock performance data, industry comparisons,
and earnings estimates.
- Stockfever.com: provides
basic information about publicly traded companies.
- The Public Register's Annual Report Service (PRARS):
includes the ability to order printed versions of annual
reports (for free) and a service titled "Corporate
Window," which provides various corporate and financial
information for a select group of companies.
- The Forbes 500: a
comprehensive database of the 500 largest American public
corporations as measured by sales, profits, assets, and
market value.
- Fortune 500 List:
A collection of information about the top 500 U.S. public
companies, as well as links to industry information and
The Global 500.
- Better Business Bureau: includes links to companies
that are members of the organization.
- Small Business
Administration Hotlist: offers a great collection of
information about business trends and small businesses.
- Inside Sources:
o The
Vault : Check out company snapshots based on interviews and analysis.
Plus, get a picture of what it's really like to work there from
the company message boards.
o Wetfeet.com: Complies company
stats and Q&As. Like The Vault, message boards provide an
anonymous look at what workers really think.
o F*cked Company: Want to find
out if a company is likely to be around for a while? See how
often it appears in the archives of this site, which collects
gossip, rumors and evidence of boneheaded management.
- Web-based Company Research Links:
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Industry Research
- Web-based Industry Research Links:
- Industry Profiles: A collection of links related to
getting industry information. Please note that a number
of their links no longer seem to work.
- Plunkett
Research, Ltd.: a free industry information channel
designed to assist job-seekers in your basic market research
and analysis of potential industries -- from Plunkett Research,
Ltd. Some great top-line information about all major industries.
Free to job-seekers.
- U.S. Industrial Outlook: If you don't have access to
the current print volumes, earlier years are available at
this site.
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Country Research
- Online Country Research Resources:
- CIA World Factbook -- detailed snapshots, compiled by
the U.S. government, of just about every country in the
world.
- CountryReports.org
-- a great source for finding top-line information about
just about every country in the world, including culture,
geography, economy, political system, news, maps, and more.
- Country
Studies -- from the U.S. Library of Congress. These
guides cover social, economic, political, and national security
systems and institutions of more than 100 countries throughout
the world.
- globalEDGE
-- a comprehensive global business resource center from
the folks at Michigan State University. Key strength are
links to further information.
- International
Business & Technology -- a learning portal that
provides links to business, communication, import-export,
linguistic, legal, marketing, media, monetary, public affairs,
research, technology, trade, and travel information at both
world and country levels. From BRINT Institute.
- Virtual
International Business & Economic Sources -- a portal
to more than 1,600 Internet sources of international business
and economic information. From the folks at the University
of North Carolina at Charlotte.
- World Trade Organization -- a great source of worldwide
business and trade information and trends.
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Other Research Resources
- Other Guides to Researching Companies:
- Internet/Web-Based Reference Resources:
- Business-Related News, Magazines, and Newspapers:
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Search
Engines
The following
are the major Web search engines that job-seekers can use in
your Web searches for more career information, other career
and job sites, and company and industry research.
First, our
two favorite search engines -- both are very comprehensive in
their coverage of the number of Web pages they index -- and
you can't go wrong using either of them:
- Google, an amazing site -- and current favorite
-- which uses sophisticated next-generation technology to
produce the right results fast with every query. Currently
has more than 3 billion Web pages and images in its
index! Web address: http://www.google.com
- Alta Vista, which claims to be the first full-text search
service in the world dedicated to setting the standard for
search technology and how people find information. Good results.
Web address: http://www.altavista.com/
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And here are the rest -- also good search engines -- in alphabetical
order:
- All the Web, which has a goal of cataloging the entire
Web, and expects to continue to grow with the Web to 2 billion
documents and beyond. Web address: http://www.alltheweb.com/
- Excite, which searches more than 50 million Web sites
and two weeks of Usenet News. Web address: http://www.excite.com
- Go.com,
which is the only search engine that fully integrates Internet
directory browsing and Internet searching. Part of the Go
Network. Web address: http://www.go.com/
- HotBot, which indexes every word, link, and media file
on more than 110 million Web documents and refreshes its entire
database of documents every three to four weeks. Part of the
Lycos Network of sites. A great tool. Web address: http://www.hotbot.com/
- iWon, which is both a directory and a search engine (and
gives away lots of prizes!), has an index of more than 500
million documents updated constantly to ensure more precise
search results. Powered by Inktomi. Web address: http://www.iwon.com/
- Jayde.com, a search engine directory with 1 million plus
site listings, and offering visitor control over how search
results are displayed. Web address: http://www.jayde.com/
- Lycos, which displays the most-visited sites at the top
of the list rather than by displaying results by relevancy
(the frequency with which your search word appears on a Web
page). Web address: http://www.lycos.com/
- NBCi, which ranks site popularity based on the number
of its users who click on the site and find it useful for
a particular topic, the higher it will be listed in the search
results over time. Web address:http://www.nbci.com/
- Northern Light Search, which offers this goal: "to
index and classify all human knowledge to a unified consistent
standard and make it available to everyone in the world in
a single integrated search." Sorts results into folders
based on keywords, source, or other criteria. Web address:
http://www.northernlight.com/
- Scrub the Web, which ranks Websites in its search results
by the relavancy of the search term to the number of times
it finds the search term in the sites. Web address: http://www.scrubtheweb.com/
- SPLAT, maintains a large and spam free-index to make
searching easier and more complete for our users. They search
the web sites splattered all over the Net to find exactly
what you need, so you don't have to. Web address: http://www.splatsearch.com/
- WebCrawler, which operates by navigating the Web and
either building an index for later use or by searching in
real-time. Web address: http://webcrawler.com/
- What's New, the complete listings of new Web sites on
the Internet. A great site for finding the latest additions
to the Web. Web address: http://www.whatsnu.com/index.html
- WiseNut, a rapidly rising relative newcomer, which searches/indexes
more than 1.5 billion Web pages. Developing the fastest
and most comprehensive search engine on the Web. Web address:
http://www.wisenut.com/
- WWW Riot, which describes itself as the anti-portal.
Has potential as a directory and search engine. Web address:
http://www.dxpnet.com/riot/
- Yahoo, a popular favorite, which is a fairly comprehensive
subject index. More of a directory than search engine; however,
have partnered with Google.com to provide excellent searching
in addition to its directory. Web address: http://www.yahoo.com
- Ixquick, a highly-ranked and powerful metasearch engine
that rapidly searches 12 search engines simultaneously. Available
in multiple languages. Excellent results page. Web address:
http://www.ixquick.com
- Ask Scott, the virtual reference librarian who will provide
you with the best reference tools for your search. Web address:
http://www.askscott.com
- Dogpile, which is really a metasearch service that integrates
several medium and large Web search and index guides into
a single service. From the Go2Net Network. Web address: http://www.dogpile.com
- MetaCrawler, another metasearch service from the Go2Net
Network that collates results, eliminates duplication, scores
the results and provides the user with a comprehensive list
of relevant sites. Web address: http://www.metacrawler.com
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