Your job not only consumes 40+ hours each week, but also determines how you commit the remaining hours. Would you take into consideration taking a getaway devoid of any facts about your location? Not probably. However lots of base their employment decisions on tiny or no information. Utilizing a combination of sources pointed out in this post will give you an edge in optimizing your job search and satisfaction.
By means of firsthand study, you will obtain information and facts that goes beyond the selective, usually superficial, data exchanged in the course of the interview process. The added benefits include things like:
Very first, information about a company’s economic overall health, hiring/cutback practices, treatment of employees and corporate culture will offer a much more realistic picture of prospective employers to support you make more informed choices.
Second, research will enable you expand your job possibilities and business knowledge, as nicely as support you concentrate your search on the finest possibilities, careers, salaries and geographic regions.
Third, Dr Jean Chen will increase your effectiveness for the duration of the interview method, building a additional prepared impression than a person who utilizes job interviews for information and facts gathering.
Get the scoop about employers
Once you have identified your target employers, investigate an employer by acquiring answers to concerns about its age…places…services and products…quantity of workers…size ..divisions and subsidiaries … publicly or privately owned…sales…assets…earnings…competitors…reputation…growth pattern, plans and forecast…foreign owned…mission and culture…current events, product launches…important problems…essential achievements
Off- and on the net sources of facts
There is a vast universe of facts sources-folks, publications and on line-that can be overwhelming. Mainly because there are countless World-wide-web web sites and publications for researching info, this write-up will get you began with some of the most important resources.
Print and World-wide-web Sources
The reference division of any library delivers on-line databases, CD-ROM products and printed sources such as directories, magazines, journals, newsletters and reports. You can compile lists of employers and search firms, as properly as data on your target industries and employers via print and on-line resources.
Data on Companies and Industries
o Directories in Print: lists thousands of business and industrial directories of all sorts in any field
o American Business Data Directory: database of ten million US and 1 million Canadian corporations
o US Large Company Directory: list of providers with 100+ workers
o American Companies Directory: 500,000 manufacturing businesses can be discovered in this directory offering facts on headquarters, employee size, branch areas, metro locations and sales volume
o Regular & Poor’s Register: 55,000 public and private firms by region, state, city zip code, region code, product lines, as effectively as 400,000 executives and biographies of 70,000 corporate officers and directors
o SEC Documents
o The Major Book: companies are listed by sector or state
o Hoover’s On-line, vault, knowX and dnb: deliver details on corporations as well as detailed fee-primarily based enterprise reports
o Thomas Register: 155,000+ firms listed by trademark and variety of item
o Directory of US Private & Public Businesses
o Directory of Corporate Affiliations-US Private: monetary and other data on eight,000+ privately held businesses
o Wall Street Study: hyperlinks to firm SEC filings, stock quotes and history, news releases, earnings and other information
o Annual Reports: free of charge service providing hyperlinks to annual reports of thousands of providers
o Patents: patent info by invention variety or description
o Vertical Net: has the scoop on a wide variety of industries
Federal Government Agencies and Position Announcements
o US Federal Government Agencies: lists government agency house pages for researching information and locating job leads
o How to Locate Enterprise Intelligence in Washington: identifies sources of info, which includes crucial authorities, in the federal government
News Releases and Publications
o Small business Wire: check out enterprise news releases by business
o On-line and print company periodicals: Wall Street Journal, Enterprise Week, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Instances, Chronicle of Larger Education, Fortune, New York Times, Barron’s, Fast Business, Institutional Investor, BizJournal and other newspapers and magazines.
o Organization net web pages: locate recent articles and news releases on corporation web web sites that can offer concepts to prepare informed, well-conceived inquiries to ask at the interview
Biographical Info
o Who’s Who directories: numerous directories listing company experts in your field or other industries
o Reference Book of Corporate Management (Dun and Bradstreet): standard biographical information and facts on principal corporate officers and directors you can also conduct a search on “Google” to obtain information and facts on particular men and women in your target organizations
Experienced Associations
o Encyclopedia of Associations: names and places of 22,000+ organizations, membership number, contact facts and additional
Search Firms
o Directory of Executive Recruiters: contingency and retained search firms listed by market, geography or specialty
Men and women and Networking
Tap into your current network of contacts, including colleagues or persons in a field you are researching, to collect info on your target employers. You can find new sources of info through on-line chat rooms exactly where you can get suggestions and ask others for information and facts. To discover a chat space in your field or any other, stop by: Clickit, AboutWork, and TalkCity.
You can also stop by netshare, execunet and 6figurejobs (.com) as sources of career info, job leads and networking activities for executives.
On-line newsgroups are network discussions groups that deliver opinions and details on a variety of subjects. Choose one that is related to your field of interest and commence a dialog by posing a query. With newsgroups you can from time to time get immediate responses. Listservs are groups of persons who exchange emails about a distinct subject or profession. You can uncover listservs by way of liszt and reference (.com). In addition there are on-line networking sites such as LinkedIn, Networking For Professionals, ItsNotWhatYouKnow and others.