Why research an employer?
To know if you want to apply for a job there
To prepare for an interview What should I know about an employer?
products and services
history
philosophy
size
location
key personnel
finances
corporate culture
company’s goals and vision
projected areas of growth
problems or challenges it faces
competitors
reputation Where should I start?
Researching organizations can be an overwhelming, frustrating, and expensive undertaking. Or it can be quite simple and inexpensive--if you familiarize yourself with just a few good tools and strategies. The sale of business information is a multi-million dollar industry. There is a tremendous amount of information out there, on the web and in print, available through literally hundreds of sources and vendors—most of whom would like to sell it to you for a whopping subscription fee. Bear in mind that as a Davidson student, you have free access to some material that others pay for. Never buy information without checking with the Careers Office or a reference librarian to see if you can get access to it for free. As you put together your research strategy, keep in mind the following: 1. The best first source of information about an organization is its website. Very often you can find out about its products and services, history, philosophy, size, location, key personnel, and finances by exploring the website. Some sites post annual reports and links to news items about the organization. You can even infer a lot about the organization by considering the currency, accuracy, and extent of the information provided by the site as well as its layout and ease of use. Note that whatever you find on the website represents what the company says about itself and wants you to know. You should delve further to ensure that you get a fuller picture of the organization. 2. A good way to gather alternative perspectives on an organization, once you have some basic information about it, is to find personal contacts who can give you insights about working there. The Career Services Office can help you find Davidson alums who are current and former employees and/or students who have interned or volunteered there. Ask friends and family if they know of people with connections to the company. Network and conduct informational interviews (for advice on how to proceed, contact Career Services). 3. Once you have tapped these two resources, you’ll want to find out anything you can about the corporate culture, the company’s goals and vision, projected areas of growth, the problems or challenges it faces, its competitors, and its reputation. In general, you can find everything you need from websites, personal contacts, profiles of the organization, relevant financial information (often supplied in profiles or annual reports), and news items in general news sources and business journals. Where you look for this depends on the kind of organization you are researching. Sources that are useful for researching large companies may not be helpful in researching non-profits or very small organizations, and vice versa. See the next section “Research strategies by type of organization” for guidance. 4. Although the focus of this guide is on researching the employer, don’t neglect to gather information about the particular industry represented by the organization you are researching. Good resources to consult include the industry profiles available through Vault and Standard & Poor’s (details below). You can also find industry information in some of the many print resources in the Career Serv ices Library, as well as on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.
Research Strategies and Resources by Type of Organization
The best strategy to use for researching any company or non-profit is outlined above. Below are the best resources to consult for information on large companies, non-profits, small companies, and other types of employers like governments. Detailed descriptions of each resource and where to locate it can be found in the sections following this one:
Larger for-profit organizations (public or private)
website
personal contacts
Career Search Vault (profiles, financial info, industry info)
Hoover’s Online (profiles of public & private U.S. companies; competitors;
business news through link to other databases in NC Live)
LexisNexis Online (public & private company profiles, U.S. & worldwide
business & general news articles, full text; industry info)
Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Directory (public & private U.S. &
Canadian company profiles)
Business Source Elite and/or other news indexes and databases in the
lists below (news articles) If you still need more information, try the other resources on this handout or consult the Riley Guide http://www.rileyguide.com/, Researching Companies Online http://www.learnwebskills.com/company/index.html, or CEO Express http://www.ceoexpress.com/default.asp Non-profits
website
personal contacts
Career Search (profiles, competitors)
Guidestar (profiles, financial info)
Foundation Center —Foundation Finder (profiles; financial info)
LPNS ONLINE (news articles)
Encyclopedia of Associations ( Career Serv ices Library & College Library)
InfoTrac and other general & business news indexes and databases on this
handout. (news) For more help, consult Researching Companies Online à Nonprofit
Organizations http://www.learnwebskills.com/company/index.html Small organizations
website
personal contacts
Career Search (profiles, competitors)
local Chamber of Commerce http://www.chamberofcommerce.com/
local Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/
local Book of Lists (in Career Services Library)
InfoTrac and other general & business news sources on this handout; local
newspapers may be your best sources for very small organizations
Yellowpages for competitors For more help, you might check the “Small Business” resources under “Business Research” at CEO Express http://www.ceoexpress.com/default.asp. However, few of these resources are free. Other organizations (e.g. libraries, museums, hospitals)
Website of the organization (or literature, including annual report)
Personal contacts
Field-specific directories (e.g. Official Museum Directory, American
Library Directory) Many of these are print resources in the College
Library and/or the Career Services Library)
Encyclopedia of Associations (to find professional associations)
Websites for professional associations
Professional journals (use appropriate indexes from College Library at
http://www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/refer/indexes.asp
General news sources
Books on the particular field / profession / industry in the Career Services
Library Governments (federal, state, local)
Website of government (look for budget, annual report) and website of
specific department
Personal contacts
Field specific directories (e.g. for public libraries, public schools)
General news sources, including local newspapers A good starting point for government research is the College Library
Government Sources Homepage:
http://www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/govdoc.asp
Resources
Electronic resources available free of charge to students through the Davidson College Office of Career Services. Access them by clicking on the “Job Searching” button on the Career Serv ices homepage and then clicking on the appropriate icon on the screen that appears: http://www2.davidson.edu/studentlife/cs/cs_srch.asp
CareerSearch http://beta.careersearch.net//client (for profiles, competitors)
A powerful on-line employment research tool with a database of more than one million employers from every major sector of the world of work. Has a number of different search capabilities including geographic location, industry and keyword. Great for compiling lists of potential employers. Also provides brief company profiles. You must create an account for yourself in order to use the database. Contact the Office of Career Serv ices for the client referral number. E Careers https://www.myinterfase.com/davidson/student/ (for job listings, profiles)
Our new, online careers information database includes employers who have listed jobs and internships with Davidson College . Most listings provide an overview of the organization and a link to its website. To locate personal contacts, you can access a database of Davidson alums willing to serve as career mentors. You must register on the database to be able to use it. Read the information about usernames and passwordson the e Careers log-in page. If you can’t get logged in, contact the Careers Office. Vault http://www.vault.com/cb/careerlib/careerlib_main.jsp?parrefer=767 (for profiles, financial info, competitors, industry info)
A comprehensive website for company research and career-related information. If you enter the site through our portal on our Job Searching page, you can get free downloads of their Vault Guides (industry and career guides, and employer profiles) and access other company, industry, and career information. (Students with a Davidson domain email address may download ebooks for free by clicking on the Vault link above and requesting a password, which will be emailed immediately and valid for 24 hours) Electronic Resources available to students free of charge through the Davidson College Library. From the Davidson College Library homepage (http://www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/little.htm), click on “Indexes and Databases” and then on “All Indexes and Databases.” Scroll down the alphabetical list to find the following resources. Off-campus access to these resources is available by proxy server to current Davidson College faculty, staff and students. (Note that some of these resources are available to the library through NC LIVE, a service that offers the citizens of North Carolina free online access to complete articles from over 5,500 newspapers, journals, magazines, and encyclopedias, indexing for over 15,000 periodical titles, and access to over 13,000 electronic books. Resources available through NC LIVE may require a few more mouse clicks through intermediate pages to reach, but they’re worth it!) ABI/Inform Complete (for news)
Provides citations to articles in over 1,600 business periodicals, including trade journals, scholarly journals, and business-related newspapers (1905-present). Covers the fields of management, accounting, advertising, economics, finance, and marketing; lists case studies, executive profiles, and information for regional, national, and international companies. Also includes some full text articles. ABI/Inform Complete includes the following databases: ABI/Inform Archive, ABI/Inform Global, ABI/Inform Trade & Industry, and ABI/Inform Dateline. Business Abstracts Full Text (for news)
Indexes articles from over 600 business periodicals, including Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and a number of trade and research journals from 1982 to present. Also contains citations for product reviews, corporate profiles, and interviews, and the full text of selected articles from 1995 to the present. Business Source Elite (for news)
Provides indexing and abstracting for over 1,500 business magazines and journals from 1984 to present, including The Wall Street Journal. Selected full text is available for 900 of those journals from 1990 to the present. Hoover's Company Capsules & Profiles (profiles, financial info, competitors)
Provides basic information, such as location, names of key officers, sales and employment figures, and stock symbols, for more than 15,000 public and private companies. Also contains in-depth profiles for over 5,000 public and private companies in the U.S. and around the world. Each profile includes company operations and history, financial data, SEC reports, and information about officers, products, and key competitors. InfoTrac Custom Newspapers (for news)
Provides indexing and some full text for the Asheville Citizen Times, Atlanta Journal & Constitution, New York Times, News & Record (Greensboro, NC), International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, and Winston-Salem Journal. InfoTrac OneFile / Power Search (for news)
Indexes 8,000 periodicals, including scholarly journals and popular magazines; provides the full-text of articles from over 4,000 of these titles (1980-present). Also indexes the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. This databases includes InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP. Kiplinger Finance & Forecasts (for news, financial info)
Contains the full text of business, economic, and public policy forecasts and reports published by Kiplinger, 1996-present. Titles include The Kiplinger Letter, The Kiplinger Tax Letter, and Kiplinger's Peronsal Finance, among others. LexisNexis Academic (for news, financial info, industry info)
Provides the full text of articles from local, national, and international newspapers, magazines, and trade journals as well as newswires, business information, patents, legal documents, and transcripts of radio and television broadcasts. LexisNexis Company Dossier (company profiles, financial & industry info)
Provides information about over 10 million U.S. and 3 million foreign companies; data and reports are drawn from Hoover's, the Directory of Corporate Affiliations, and Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations as well as from Bloomberg News, Disclosure U.S. Public Company Profiles, Experian Business Reports, INVESTEXT Current Reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Standard & Poor's. The database also provides legal information and intellectual property information. Financial reports can be downloaded into Microsoft Excel. To search Company Dossier: choose "Business" from the list of Academic Search Forms in the upper left-hand corner of the main LexisNexis Academic page and then select "Company Dossier." You can also use the "Quick Search" option on the main LexisNexis Academic page. Newspaper Source (for news)
Provides selected full text for 143 U.S. and international newspapers, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal (Eastern and Western editions), Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and the Raleigh News & Observer. Newspapers (for news)
The Davidson College Library provides online access to many U.S. and foreign newspapers. To access them, go to the library homepage (http://www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/little.htm) and click on “Journals Online.” You will end up on a page listing all newspapers available to Davidson students online, in print, or in microform. North Carolina Community Newspapers (for news)
Provides current coverage of 139 newspapers in the state and varying archival coverage. North Carolina Education Directory (for profiles)
Contains addresses and phone numbers of every North Carolina public, federal or charter school and public school system, all employees of the Department of Public Instruction, contact information for education organizations, associations, North Carolina commissions, and educational material suppliers. Proquest Newspapers (for news)
Indexes, abstracts, and provides selected full text from the following major national newspapers: The Christian Science Monitor (1988 to present), Los Angeles Times (1985 to present), New York Times (1999 to present), Wall Street Journal (1982 to present), and Washington Post (1987 to present). Also includes all of the titles in North Carolina Newsstand (indexing as well as some full text for the Greensboro News & Record, Wilmington Morning Star, Raleigh News & Observer, and selected regional sources. Regional Business News (for news)
Abstracts for 67 regional business publications. Includes some full text for 52 of those titles. Other Internet Resources Providing Mostly Free Information: Annual Report Service http://www.annualreportservice.com/
Gives you access to thousands of annual reports when you sign up for your free membership. You will have the choice to view the online report or to request a free hard copy. Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/
BBB reports provide information on over two million businesses and charities. The site also provides links to local Better Business Bureaus in the U.S. and Canada . Chamber of Commerce Directory http://www.chamberofcommerce.com/
Provides links to chambers of commerce for U.S. cities. Foundation Center http://lnp.fdncenter.org/finder.html
Use the free Foundation Finder to search by name for basic information about foundations within the universe of more than 70,000 private and community foundations in the U.S. Also includes Literature of the NonProfit Sector Online, a searchable database of the literature of philanthropy: http://lnps.fdncenter.org/. It incorporates the unique contents of the Foundation Center 's five libraries and contains more than 24,000 full bibliographic citations, of which more than 16,300 have descriptive abstracts. It is updated daily. Additional info and publications available for a fee. Guidestar http://www.guidestar.org/
An excellent free national database of U.S. charitable organizations providing data on more than 850,000 IRS-recognized nonprofits. Free registration (requiring minimal information) gives you access to very full reports on the organizations listed. Thomas Register http://www.thomasregister.com
Free online resource with information on companies and products manufactured in North America . U.S. Bureau of Labor Statsitics http://stats.bls.gov/
Provides access to many sources of industry information including: Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://stats.bls.gov/oco/home.htm) and Industries at a Glance (http://stats.bls.gov/iag/iaghome.htm) For Ticker symbols, go to http://quote.yahoo.com/l or to Hoover ’s For SIC codes, go to http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naicstab.htm For NAICS codes, go to http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html
Print Resources on Campus. The Career Serv ices Library contains 1100+ books, periodicals, videos and CDs on various careers & industries, internships, job hunting & more. Most of these books can be checked out. In addition, the College Library has many reference books for finding employer and industry information. The alpha-numeric code in parentheses following the resource title is the Davidson College Library call number.
Book of Lists for various major cities (at Career Serv ices Library) Chronicle of Higher Education (at Career Serv ices Library & College Library) Company Profiles for Students, v. 1 & 2. (R 338.7 / C737).
Dated [pub. 1999] and limited in scope, but a still a good supplementary source of info on major companies presented in a reader-friendly format. Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Directory (R 338 / D897m)
Provides information on approximately 1,600,000 U.S. and Canadian leading public and private businesses. Company information includes industry information with SICs, size (employees & annual sales), type of ownership, principal executives & biographies. Encyclopedia of Associations (R061 / G15e) (Also at Career Serv ices Library) LexisNexis Directory of Corporate Affiliations (R 338.74 / D5981)
Profiles major public and privates businesses in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates the parent and subsidiary companies for each listing. Mergent (formerly Moody’s)
This group of resources, including the online database, contains financial and descriptive data for more than 15,000 U.S. public companies, 20,000 non-U.S. public companies from 100 countries, and 20,000 U.S. municipal entities as well as extensive corporate bond, unit investment trust, corporate actions, mutual fund, and dividend information.
Annual Bond Record (R 332.63 / M815b)
Annual Dividend Record (R332.63 / M817d)
Company Archives Manual (R338 / M559)
International Manual (R 332.67 / M815in) Peterson’s Guides to Graduate School (R 378.15 / P485) (Also at Careers Library)
Provides information on more than 42,000 graduate and professional programs offered by accredited colleges in the U.S., Canada, and U.S. territories, and by those institutions outside the U.S. that are accredited by U.S. accrediting bodies. Standard & Poor’s
A highly respected source of business information. Provides very brief company profiles, ticker symbols, and listings for corporate executives for 75,000 U.S. and Canadian corporations. The industry surveys are very thorough, but if you cannot get to the library to use them, WetFeet provides free downloads of their own industry surveys.
Register of Corporations (R 338.74 / R823)
Stock Reports (R 332.63 / S785s)
Industry Surveys (R 332.67 / S785i)
Further Resources. To avoid overwhelming you with information, we have only listed a small fraction of the resources out there. If you would like to learn about more of them, we recommend three reputable “megasites” for employer information (listed below). Note that they will provide links to commercial sites that are fully open only to subscribers. Some of them are free of charge to Davidson students, but they must be accessed through portals provided by Career Serv ices or the College Library: The Riley Guide http://www.rileyguide.com/ Researching Companies Online http://www.learnwebskills.com/company/index.html CEO Express http://www.ceoexpress.com/default.asp
(Very complete but a little overwhelming) With all the information out there, it’s easy to get bogged down or overwhelmed. Don’t let it happen! Follow the steps for researching various kinds organizations outlined in this guide, start with the electronic and paper resources available through the Career Services Office and the College Library, and if you have any trouble, ask our Career Services Librarian for help or put yourself in the hands of a good reference librarian at any college library or large public library who will be familiar with the rapidly changing realm of business resources. (Last updated 9/05)
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