How to Research Companies

by Karmen N.T. Crowther 

To prepare effectively for the job search, you need to know as much as possible about the organizations that interest you.

Knowing how to research companies and organizations is crucial to a successful job-search campaign. To tailor your resume and cover letter to a particular position, and especially to prepare effectively for an interview, you need to know as much as possible about the company or organization.

Employers perceive “researching the company” as a critical factor in the evaluation of applicants because it reflects interest and enthusiasm. In the interview, it shows that you understand the purpose of this process and establishes a common base of knowledge from which questions can be asked and to which information can be added, thus enabling both applicant and interviewer to evaluate the position match more accurately.

Try to locate the following items of basic information about the company: age, services or products, competitors within the industry, growth pattern, reputation, divisions and subsidiaries, location/length of time established there, size, number of employees, sales, assets and earnings, new products or projects, number of locations, and foreign operations.

To begin your search, visit your career center and locate recruiting literature provided by companies. Be sure also to check company profiles appropriate for your career choices in one of the NACE Job Choices magazines. Then look for other reference books such as Standard and Poor’s Register, which has several volumes that include information on industry classifications, geographic locations, names, and profiles of company executives and company addresses.

When you have considered all available materials, turn your attention to the business reference section of your campus or local library and continue your search. The following is a detailed company research reference guide you can use in any library.

Where to begin

Option 1: Determine if your company is publicly owned.

Publicly owned corporations make shares available for purchase; privately owned ones do not. It is usually much easier to locate information on publicly owned companies listed on a national or regional stock exchange, for they are required by law to make certain kinds of information available to stockholders and to the public at large.

Once you know if shares of stock in a company are publicly traded on a stock exchange, you will have a clue about the best places to begin your search for information. To find out if shares of stock in your company are publicly traded, look at:

1. Stock price listings in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Barron’s, or a similar source.
2. The web sites of the three major stock exchanges where public companies are traded. Check these for your company’s name. Try the American Stock Exchange (www.amex.com), the New York Stock Exchange (www.
   nyse.com), and the NASDAQ (www.nasdaq.com).

Option 2: Determine if your company is a subsidiary or a division.

If you did not find the name of your company in any of the sources above, it may be a subsidiary or a division of a larger corporation. A subsidiary may be as difficult to learn about as a privately owned firm because the parent corporation is under no obligation to divulge data except on the company as a whole. To determine the subsidiary status of a company and the name of its parent corporation, look at:

1. Directory of Corporation Affiliations, National Register Publishing. One volume of the directory provides a guide to corporate linkage for nearly 4,000 U.S. public companies and their divisions, subsidiaries, and affiliates.
2. America’s Corporate Families, Dun & Bradstreet. This lists more than 12,000 companies and their 70,000-plus subsidiaries and divisions in the United States.
3. Standard and Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives. Volume 3 of this set has a corporate family index.

Option 3: Determine if your company is privately owned.

If you think your company is privately owned but has sizable assets or sales, you may find it listed in a directory and be able to confirm from the brief information given there that it is, indeed, privately owned. Most national business directories include both private and public companies, but usually only the largest of them. Therefore, even if you do not find your company listed, it is still possible that it is privately owned. A source of confirmation of status for large private firms is:

1. Directory of Corporate Affiliations, National Register Publishing. Nearly 9,000 large, private firms with annual sales of more than $10 million, plus their subsidiaries and divisions, are briefly profiled in one volume of this directory.

Option 4: Determine if your company is foreign owned.

It may be surprising to find that a company that you thought to be American is actually foreign owned. If a company is foreign owned, finding information about it may be more difficult, as most libraries will have a limited collection of international business materials. Also, the laws requiring disclosure of corporate financial information will be different in foreign countries. If your company is a subsidiary or a division of the foreign corporation, information can be even more elusive. To determine whether your company is foreign owned or based, look at:

1. Directory of Corporate Affiliations, National Register Publishing. A volume of this directory lists international companies, both public and private, and their subsidiaries and affiliates—more than 100,000 firms.
   
2. Who Owns Whom: North American Edition, Dun & Bradstreet. This provides information on the ownership of subsidiary and associate companies and indicates how they fit into their parent organizations. It covers U.S. and Canadian firms as well as foreign parent companies with U.S. or Canadian subsidiaries.

Option 5: Determine if your company is local, regional, or otherwise small in scope.

If you have not found your company listed as publicly trading stock, as a subsidiary or a foreign corporation, or as privately owned, consider whether it may be a small local or regional company.

Although it may be possible to purchase shares of stock in such companies, they may not be publicly traded on any of the major stock exchanges, and financial data may not be available in your library. In most cases, however, these companies are privately owned and, therefore, it is doubly difficult to find information about them.

Gathering information

Option 1: If your company is publicly owned:

Once you have determined that shares of stock are traded in your company and that it is listed on a major stock exchange, you can consult a number of sources for information. Some sources may be available in your library electronically (see those titles highlighted in red) as well as in traditional paper volumes.

Directories

These are useful for addresses, telephone numbers, and names of top executives.

1. Million Dollar Directory, Dun & Bradstreet. This covers 100,000 of the largest U.S. corporations, providing addresses, products, approximate sales, and number of employees; and lists top officers.
2. Ward’s Business Directory, Gale Group. This provides brief data for both public and large private companies arranged alphabetically, geographically, and by sales size.
3. Standard and Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives. Volume 1 of this set lists 75,000 corporations, with addresses, top officers, annual sales, and number of employees.
4. Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. More than 20 volumes provide a comprehensive directory of American manufacturers, arranged by product. Two volumes are an alphabetical list by company name. This resource is also available through the Internet (www.thomasregister.com).
5. Specialized single-industry directories. Hundreds of such directories are published for a wide variety of industries. Check your library’s catalog to see what is available for the industry you are interested in, e.g., advertising agencies. The entry in the catalog will look like this: ADVERTISING AGENCIES—DIRECTORIES.
6. Hoover’s Online. This web site (www.hoovers.com) has basic directory and financial information for about 15,000 large companies, including links to their web pages.

Financial sources

These are useful for balance sheet and income statements, stock and security data, product lines, and organizational structures.

1. Moody’s Manuals, Mergent FIS. Volumes in this series cover companies listed on the U.S. stock exchanges in a variety of business areas. Information for each company usually includes a brief corporate history, business and products, a list of subsidiaries and properties, officers, comparative income and balance sheet statistics, and securities data.
2. Standard and Poor’s Corporation Records. Similar in content and scope to Moody’s Manuals, this set has both financial and narrative profiles of publicly owned U.S. companies.
3. Value Line Investment Survey. This analyzes and reports on approximately 2,000 stocks in 90 industries on a rotating quarterly basis. Data for each publicly owned company’s stock are presented in a one-page summary that includes a 10-year statistical history of key investment factors plus future performance estimates.
4. Annual report to stockholders. A publicly owned company’s annual report to its stockholders contains current financial statistics and other data about the firm’s operation. Many libraries have these reports. Public companies often include their annual report on their web site.
5. 10-K Reports. These financial disclosure reports, submitted annually to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by publicly owned corporations, contain a variety of financial data. The full text of these reports is available at the SEC’s Edgar web site (www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm). Copies may be available in your library.
6. Disclosure/Global Access. This electronic service contains excerpts from both annual reports to stockholders and 10-K reports, making it a quick source of financial information about public corporations.

Indexes

These are useful for background articles on all aspects of the company.

1. Business Periodicals Index. This subject index covers approximately 350 English-language periodicals in all areas of business, from accounting to transportation. It is a starting point for periodical articles on any business topic.
2. RDS Business & Industry. This is an excellent index for current information on U.S. companies, products, and industries drawn from a variety of trade journals.
3. ABI/Inform, UMI. Available only in electronic form, this index covers several hundred general and scholarly business periodicals.
4. Business and Industry ASAP. This subject index may be available in your library as a part of the Infotrac system. It covers several hundred business periodicals, the Wall Street Journal, and the financial section of the New York Times.
5. Wall Street Journal Index, UMI. This indexes the major U.S. business newspaper on a monthly basis. Articles may cover companies and industries of all kinds in locations nationwide. The WSJ web site (www.wsj.com) has a free archive of articles for the past 30 days; subscribers have access to more.
6. Several other business news sources are available through the Internet. For example, look at Top Money News (www.usatoday.com/money/mfront.htm), CNNfn (www.cnnfn.com) or Bloomberg (www.bloomberg.com). Each of these contains today’s business news stories, plus a limited number of stories from the past few months.

Additional sources

These are useful for the specialized information needs listed below.

1. For company history, try:
   • Library catalog. Company histories will be listed in your library’s catalog under the name of the company. If none are available, look for a history of the industry.
   • International Directory of Company Histories, St. James Press. In several volumes, this provides an overview of the historical development of several thousand of the world’s most important companies, public and private.
2. For information on an entire industry, try:
   • Standard and Poor’s industry surveys. These offer an industry profile and trends for approximately 50 major industry groups and financial comparisons of leading companies in each industry.
   • U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook, McGraw Hill. Produced in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce, this volume surveys more than 50 broad categories and provides brief statistical data for each.
3. For investment prospects, try:
   • Wall Street Transcript. This is a weekly financial newspaper with investment reports and recommendations from brokerage houses.
   • Value Line Investment Survey. This gives a one-page summary and analysis of the investment outlook for about 2,000 corporations, including future performance estimates.
   • Standard and Poor’s stock reports. These are brief reports for companies listed on the New York, American, NASDAQ, and regional stock exchanges.
   • A number of web sites provide financial information and investment opinion, but use them with caution because their reliability and accuracy can vary. Try the Wall Street Research Network (www.wsrn.com) or Quicken (www.quicken.com/investments/) to explore a specific company.
4. For product information, try:
   • Brands and Their Companies, Gale Group. This is a guide to more than 200,000 trade, brand, product, and design names.
   • Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. One volume of this set has an extensive
   list of trade names; several volumes contain company product catalogs.
5. For biographical information about top executives, try:
   • Reference Book of Corporate Management, Dun & Bradstreet. Arranged alphabetically by company, this resource offers brief biographies of top executives in leading U.S. firms.
   • Standard and Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives. Volume 2 contains brief biographical data on directors and officers of major U.S. corporations.
   • Who’s Who in Finance and Industry. This contains career sketches of leading business people in the United States and Canada.
6. For pending litigation or legal proceedings, try:
   • 10-K Reports. One section of these reports outlines any current legal proceedings against the company and its subsidiaries.

Option 2: If your company is a subsidiary:

If your company is a subsidiary or a division of a publicly owned corporation, you’ll find information less readily available. For example, the parent corporation is not required to divulge financial information for the separate divisions; therefore, details of the financial status of the subsidiary will be difficult to verify. However, you may find other information in a variety of sources, both print and electronic. Choose from this list:

Directories

Any of the directories suggested here for publicly owned companies may also list subsidiaries or divisions. In addition, look at the Directory of Corporate Affiliations and America’s Corporate Families. This provides brief information, such as address, telephone number, and the president’s or chief executive officer’s name.

Financial sources

You won’t find the detailed financial data available for parent corporations broken down for the constituent subsidiaries and divisions. However, the parent does occasionally include some data in its annual report to stockholders or in its 10-K report if the subsidiary’s financial condition has made a significant difference in the corporation’s overall financial status. It is therefore worth looking at these two sources, described here under publicly owned companies.

Indexes

Most of the information you’ll find on companies that are subsidiaries will probably come from periodical and newspaper articles. The larger and more well known the subsidiary, the more articles you’re likely to find. It may be somewhat easier to locate information about companies that are consumer-oriented than about industrial manufacturers. Try any of the indexes listed for publicly owned companies.

Additional sources

The additional sources listed here for public companies will also be useful for subsidiaries, with the exception of those listed for investment prospects. You can’t purchase shares of stock in a subsidiary, only in the corporation as a whole, so investment advisory services won’t include these small parts of the corporation.

Option 3: If your company is privately owned:

Once you’ve ascertained that your company is privately owned, you’ll need to be creative in your approach to finding information. Printed sources may have only brief and incomplete data on private companies, and you may need to search outside the library for more information. Before trying this, however, examine material in the library thoroughly; it will help you ask better questions as you continue to search. Try the following sources:

Directories

Any of the directories listed for publicly owned companies will also include large private companies. Look, too, at the Directory of Corporate Affiliations volume that covers private firms.

Indexes

The information you will find on private companies is most likely to be in periodical or newspaper articles. Thus, these indexes should be where you spend the most time and effort in your company search. Remember, however, that private companies are not required to be as “open” with their information as their public counterparts. Reporters and observers, because of the difficulty of obtaining information, may write only infrequently and superficially about such companies.

This does not mean that private companies are undesirable employers. On the contrary, many of America’s best-known companies are private, including Hallmark Cards, Levi Strauss, M&M/Mars Corp., and Domino’s Pizza. Try any of the periodical indexes listed here under public corporations for articles about privately owned companies.

Web sites

Many private companies have web sites that provide brief facts about their services and accomplishments. To locate home pages of companies on the web, use a search engine, such asYahoo (www.yahoo.com) or Infoseek (infoseek.go.com). You should also try Companies Online (www.companiesonline.com).

Option 4: If your company is foreign owned:

An increasing number of foreign companies have established a U.S. division or subsidiary. Because most libraries have only a limited collection of materials on such companies, you may encounter many of the same difficulties as you would in researching a private company. Be creative in your approach and learn as much as you can before you turn to other sources of information.

Directories

Although directories provide only limited information, take a look at those directories listed in this article that helped you identify your company as foreign owned. They’ll provide address, major products and services, and foreign parent company name. Other possibilities include:

1. World Business Directory, Gale Group. This provides brief profiles of 140,000 businesses worldwide—including many smaller firms—that are involved in international trade.

Financial sources

Foreign-owned companies with operations in the United States are not subject to the same laws of financial disclosure as U.S. companies are, unless they are listed on a U.S. stock exchange. Therefore, you may not find detailed data on such companies comparable to that found in the SEC 10-K reports, and your library may have few, if any, annual reports for publicly owned foreign corporations. Try the following for financial data on the larger foreign companies:

1. Moody’s International Manual gives a variety of information on major international firms, including brief company histories, officers and directors, product lines, income statement and balance sheet data, and selected financial ratios. Note that these data are for the company as a whole, not just the U.S. operations.
2. Global Company Handbook, CIFAR, profiles more than 10,000 multinational corporations with general and financial data, including key financial ratios.
3. Worldscope, an electronic service, provides financial profiles of more than 13,000 major firms worldwide.

Indexes

Periodical and newspaper articles will probably be your best source of information on foreign companies. Try any of those listed in this article for publicly owned companies. Consider also:

1. EIU International Business Newsletters. This provides access to newsletters from the Economist Intelligence Unit, covering current news of interest to international managers about business and the economy in various geographic regions around the world.

Increasingly, foreign-owned companies are present on the Internet. Use a search engine such as Google (www.google.com) to locate information about your foreign company such as its home page, news articles, and the like.

Option 5: If your company is local, regional, or otherwise small in scope:

When seeking information about companies of this kind, the best approach is usually the direct one—talk to the company itself. In this case, however, you’ll want to learn about the company before you speak directly to its representative at your interview. Printed sources of information will be little, if any, help. A library may not gather information on such companies except those in its immediate area. Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean that small, local companies will not be good employers. Try some of the following ideas for gathering information on your company:

State industrial directories

All states have a directory of manufacturers located within their borders. Most give limited information—usually name, address, sales, and number of employees—though some include more information. Libraries usually have a copy of their state’s directory and may have those of surrounding states.

Local newspapers

Most college libraries have a selection of current newspapers from across the country. For information about the company you are interested in, you may want to contact the newspaper in that company’s location. You might also want to subscribe to the newspaper for a few months—don’t forget that the Sunday editions are full of job ads. For a list of newspapers, with addresses and telephone numbers, try the Editor & Publisher International Yearbook. Newspapers are increasingly available on the Internet, but, with few exceptions, usually only lead articles are covered and back files are seldom archived. Use a search engine to locate the web version of a newspaper at a specific locale.

Chambers of commerce

The chamber local to the company you are interested in may be able to fill in some background information for you. For a list of chambers, with addresses and telephone numbers, see the World Chamber of Commerce Directory. Again, you can also find many chambers on the Internet. Locate them at www.chamberofcommerce.com or use a web search engine.

Better business bureaus

Your company’s local BBB will be aware of problems consumers have reported about the company. One caution: If no complaints have been filed against the company, the BBB is not likely to have information on the firm. The BBB is on the web (www.bbb.org) with addresses of local offices and the full text of a small number of their reports.

Public libraries

Many public libraries maintain clipping files of local information from area newspapers and may have other unique sources of information for local businesses.

Researching companies and organizations is a critical step in your preparation for a job. For each new position you seek, always do your homework in this area. Your future depends on it.