in? Rev up Google, Yahoo, or YouTube, and see what you can find.
“Ratings” Lists. You can look up companies on a number of traditional “ratings” lists like Standard & Poor’s, Dun & Bradstreet, Dow Jones, Moody’s Investors Service, and Polk’s. These are services that check out companies all around the globe in order to help investors decide if they want to hand over any of their cold hard cash. I know that, as a college grad, you’re probably not investing(!), but in the searches that these companies do, they’ve uncovered a lot of great info that can come in handy for your job search. If you find accessing these lists online means you have to pay a fee, check out your college library to see if they have the printed versions of the lists that you can use for free.
Information that you get from these lists and from the company’s website will help you figure out the following:
•Is the company on the stock exchange, or is it owned by individuals? Family-owned?
•Does the company do business locally, across the U.S., or internationally?
•How long has the company been in business? Has it changed owners more than once?
•What other companies are its biggest competitors?
•Has the company grown in recent years, or is it facing tough times?
•What worldwide trends taking place today might have an impact on the company’s business?
Articles About the Company. Search for articles about the company on the Internet, too. You’ll probably find lots of online articles — even hundreds if it’s a large company. If an article is mentioned on the Internet, but you can only read it in print, see if your college library has a hard copy. Articles will most likely help you answer questions like:
•Has the company been in the news lately? If so, why? What are others saying and writing about the company?
•Has the company joined with another company or set up partnerships with any other companies?
•Has the company launched any new products or services?
•Has the company hired new top execs lately?
•What charities has the company supported, and what do these charities say about the company’s character and values?
Articles By or About Key People. Find the names of top executives on the company’s website, and try another Internet search for articles by or about some of those executives. Since it’s often the top management that sets up the company’s culture, what an exec says in an interview may tell you as much about the company as it tells you about him or her. Does the exec seem friendly in the article? Does he or she have a sense of humor? Articles like this will give you a good feeling for the company and what it’s all about.
You may even find articles that talk about a top manager before he or she joined the company. If this person could be your immediate boss or the head of your division, knowing this background will tell you a lot about the kind of people that the company likes to hire. You might even be able to find direct quotes from some executives about this person to give you an inside look at the kinds of behaviors they like or dislike. Even if this person doesn’t end up being your interviewer, by understanding more about a company’s execs, you’ll end up with a more in-depth profile of the company and its important players.
Articles will also give you a good feeling for the kind of experience the company is looking for. Find out the background of some of a company’s current employees, and you might start to see patterns in the types of people the company likes to hire. This kind of probing is definitely worth your time.
Check Out the Company Using Social Media. These days, most companies have their own social media listings on networks like Facebook or Twitter. Search for the company’s name on Facebook, and if they have a fan page, definitely become a fan! Some recruiters told me that they will even check to see if potential interviewees signed up on the company’s fan page or not. This is a great way to stick out and show your interest in the company as well as to find out all sorts of things about the company’s latest news, key players, and culture.
Companies are also releasing news on Twitter. You can search for a company’s name or a person at the company on Twitter or one of the many search engines that have been created for Twitter, like Twellow.com. You’ll probably find out what other people are saying about the company, too, and you may find someone who works there or who has interviewed with the company. See what kinds of hints they’ve left there about interviewing and what they learned from the interview, too.
The Linkedin Advantage
If you’re like most college students, you probably know more about Facebook than you know about LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn is a social networking site that’s geared toward managing your work life connections and your career. People use it to network with others in their field and to find new jobs.
LinkedIn is growing like a weed! Techcrunchies.com reports that the site had 7.7 million users in June 2008 and a whopping 45 million by June 2009. Monthly page views of LinkedIn jumped from 114 million in 2008 to 331 million in the early part of 2009. Now, that’s growth! So, if you aren’t taking advantage of this site to help you with your job search coming out of college, you’re missing out.
LinkedIn works off of the idea of “six degrees of separation” — that everyone is only six degrees away from linking with everyone else. In other words, if you set up a profile on LinkedIn and invite others you know into your network, you’ll begin to create more and more connections. LinkedIn can search your address book in Microsoft Outlook or your e-mail list and tell you who on your list already has a LinkedIn profile. You may even find out that you already know someone at one of the companies where you want to work! But even if you don’t, you may still be able to establish a connection with someone who can help you make a connection.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say someone in your network knows someone in one of the companies you’re interested in, and you see the number “2” by the employee’s name on LinkedIn. This means that the employee is only one connection away from you — someone in your own network knows that employee directly. LinkedIn then allows you to ask that friend in your network to introduce you to the employee by sending an e-mail to that person through the LinkedIn system — and you’re hooked up!
lf you see a “3” next to the name of the person you want to meet, it means you’re two connections away from that person. So, you would need to request a couple of introductions in order to meet him or her. That means you could ask the friend in your network to set up an introduction with the other person connected to the employee. Then, hopefully, that person would be willing to set up an introduction for you directly with the employee in question. That’s a fair amount of work, of course, so you’d want to make sure that the connection will be worth it to you. But if the person works in the specific area at a company you really want to work for, go for it!
lf you’re only one connection away from someone you want to connect with (a “2”), it should be easy enough to get an introduction, and it’s worth giving it a shot. So, don’t be shy about making these connections. lf someone is unwilling to help you out with information about the company, that’s fine, but you may also meet a great ally who could help you
