EDITOR'S POST
How do I identify potential employers, or research the ones I know?
Q. How do I identify potential employers, or research the ones I know?
A. You can obtain a list of companies involved in a particular industry by searching a database such as Standard and Poor's CompuStat database for a given SIC codes.
Some useful Web sites follow. Keep in mind that some may be passworded, or sell information, generally for about $20 a dossier:
- http://www.hoover.com/, the corporate directory. Some searches are free; subscription ($9.95/month) is required for full access.
- the Thomas Register
- Dun and Bradstreet has a search engine at http://www.dbisna.com/. Some searches are free. A detailed report costs $20.
If you're considering applying for a job at a publicly traded corporation, be sure to call it and request its report to stockholders (or the investor package).
That depends on what kind of information on companies you want. If you're coming for an interview at a company and you want to know as much as you can about its product line, plans for the future, etc, and it happens to be a publicly traded company, then a good start is to
- call 800-555-1212 and get the company's 800 number;
- call the company's 800 number and ask for the stock department (sometimes called investor relations department)
- request the information package for potential investors. (If a company doesn't have an 800 number call it directly :-)
Within a few days you should get a package that includes the company's latest annual report / 10K, quarterly reports / 10Q's, press releases, and usually lots of glossy brochures describing its products. You may not be able to make sense of the accounting numbers, but you'll have plenty of valuable information in the Management Discussion and Analysis section and other texts.
You may get some of the above at http://edgar.stern.nyu.edu.
In addition, if it's a publicly traded company, there are two good references for investors which you may be able to find at your local library.
Other resources, for which no other information is presently available, include:
Valueline
Standard and Poor's stock guide (not the little thing with 1 line per company that you get for free from your broker, but the collection of binders with several loose-leaf pages on each company).
Again, both of these have charts and numbers which may not make sense to you, because they're intended for a potential investor considering the company's stock, not a potential employee, but they'll also describe the company's history, and their presentation will be more balanced (i.e. they might mention that the company was nearly bankrupt a couple of years ago, and the company's own package might not).
Also you can go to a search engine such as http://www.altavista.com and http://www.dejanews.com and search Usenet and the Web for any mentions of the company's name. This is not very useful, but it is free.
The book: Researching Your Way to a Good Job: How to Find and Use Information on Industries, Companies, Jobs, Careers by Karmen Crowther, Wiley, 1993, might also be helpful.
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Posted by: Editor at July 5, 2005 11:36 AM