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How To Research Company and Industry Information On The Internet

I have selected the following Internet sites to assist you in researching both specific industry information as well as specific company information. These websites represent the top sites available for conducting your research. You will find a complete review for each site.

Industry Research
Company Research
Finding “Hidden” Information

At the conclusion of this report, I will discuss some unique ways of locating additional information about prospective employers that you should find very useful. These methods are helpful in finding “hidden” information on the web.

When conducting research on a specific company, among the key things you should look for include:

Press releases
Earnings statements
Sec filings
Company management profiles
Merger and acquisition information
New product data

Industry Research

Bizjournals.com

This Internet site provides links to daily industry news articles from 46 industry journals in 40 major US metropolitan areas that includes each newspaper's home page, with news, information and commentary from each American City market. All told, you'll find upwards of 1,000 articles, news items, and columns added each week about local business from around the country. You will archives which can be searched both by keyword and geographic location. Registration is free, and once registered you are able to receive industry of your choosing news via email. Back to top.

Market Guide

This Internet site contains a great advanced search tool that allows you to search by company, industry, research provider and analyst. The site has options to search by research provider which are financial/research organizations that compile volumes of information. While the data is intended primarily for financial purposes, the kind of data that impact financial decisions is typically the same type of information that will greatly assist you in making a decision about a company as a potential employer. Back to top.

Corporate Information

This Internet site contains a wealth of information, about both individual companies and 30 industries broken down across 65 countries. There are many other resources and sub-links for available for these various industries available at this site. You will find research reports on over 15,000 companies. Back to top.

Find Articles

FindArticles.com is a vast archive of published articles that you can search for free. Constantly updated, it contains articles dating back to 1998 from more than 300 magazines and journals. Each of the resulting articles can be read in its entirety and printed at no cost. There are excellent keyword search options that allow you to fine-tune your research. This is a great place to check for public information about a potential employer. Back to top.

Hoovers.com

This Internet site has both free and paid subscriber sections. The Industries section consists of 28 sectors, which encompass more than 300 industries. You can peruse the related descriptions, analyses, news, industries, snapshots, and company lists to find informative and important information that you need to know about a prospective employer. Other valuable links point the way to industry-related professional associations. Back to top..

Wetfeet.com

This Internet site is a source for well-balanced information that helps you make better career decisions. WetFeet's content powers the career sections of top Internet destinations including AOL, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo!, TrueCareers, and Military.com as well as hundreds of universities worldwide. You will find comprehensive profiles of 31 major industries. The profiles include industry overviews, trends, a breakdown of the major sub-industries, and job prospect data for that industry. The site also has a great matrix table that lists the following for each industry: key careers, key companies, compensation ratings and job outlook. Back to top.

Company Research

Business.com

Business.com directory contains more than 400,000 listings within 25,000 industry, product and service subcategories. This site’s mission is to help you find exactly what you're looking for. To do this, they've built what they consider to be the Internet's only business-focused search engine and directory. Their goal is to help you find what you need in a lightning fast and precise way. Back to top.

Market Guide

CEO Express

This Internet site provide a simple, focused and current tool for you to learn about business and the companies that make up global business. The site is an integrated desktop and wireless interface for you that contains a collection of links for performing business research. This site itself is not a research database but rather a central location with easy to find links to other sites that you may find very useful. Back to top.

Business Week Score Card

This Internet site allows you to determine how the companies in the S&P 500 index stack up against one another, Business Week ranked all 500 companies using key criteria indicating financial success. The BW 50 is made up of the top 50 of those companies. The format of this site is a chart called a Scoreborad that is used to rank each company. That rank is the number in the far left-hand column. You can use the Scoreboard to re-rank the companies according to the key criteria. Also, notice that beside each name is the company’s stock symbol and the symbol is a link directly to detailed BW financial data and from there to other links that frequently prove very beneficial to your research. Back to top.

Corporate Information

CNNfn

CNN’s has a financial network where you to search for news on a specific company who have made the news. This site contains a huge archive of information where you can find articles on companies from several prior years. The information in these articles prove beneficial from a historic perspective as well as providing keys to the company’s current and future plans. Back to top.

Hoovers.com

PricewaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree Survey

This Internet site is a valuable site if you are considering a potential employer who is involved in raising money for business purposes. This site is designed to take the cleanest measure of core investments in venture-backed companies in the United States. The form of this information is a survey that has captured all cash for equity investments into companies that have received at least one round of financing from a recognized, professional venture capital firm. The data returned includes a brief company description and a link to their website, the amount of financing received, as well as information on the Venture Capital firms who are investing in the company. Back to top.

SEC EDGAR Database

This Internet site is the governments system for collecting corporate filings. The SEC requires all public companies (except foreign companies and companies with less than $10 million in assets and 500 shareholders) to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically through EDGAR. Anyone can access and download this information for free. Here you'll find links to a complete list of filings available through EDGAR and instructions for searching the EDGAR database. You will find information on every publicly held company listed in this database. The kind of information that you will typically find on a company includes the nature of their business, their financial status, history, competitor information, legal proceedings, etc. Back to top.

Finding “Hidden” Information Related To Your Research

Obviously if the information were truly “hidden”, then you wouldn’t be able to see it. The term hidden for this purpose means the ability to find information that you might not find using conventional search methods on the Internet. For the purpose of this type of research, I can show you a simple, quick and effective way to locate links to prospective employers that you might not otherwise find. These links can provide invaluable new data for your job search.

Use this link: http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced Once at the site, use the Word Filters section only. Change the first drop down box to read “Must Include”. Next, type in the Internet address for the firm. For example, if you were trying to find information on Merck, the pharmaceutical firm, you would just type in merck.com and that is all. Next, change the right drop down box to “In the link to URL” and then at the bottom of the form, click on Search. Results will be returned to you from many, many locations on the Internet where this URL is linked. In order to cut down on the amount of links that you need, go to the next box underneath and make sure it reads “Must Include”, then type in another phrase in the middle box, for example press release and then leave the right box as “In the text”. Now, click on Search again and notice how this cuts down on the number of results. You can also further refine your search by using the third set of boxes in a similar fashion. You will be surprised at the quality of “hidden” information that you find. Back to top.

I encourage you to utilize these Internet sites to research potential employers and industries to not only assist you in finding new opportunities, but to allow you to be able to ask informed questions of the employer and to demonstrate that you have done a professional job of preparation for the interview.

Sincerely

Carl Bradford

President

Bradford Consulting Companies

info@bradfordconsulting.com