Employability, Careers and Placements: Company Information

Speak their language!

         Corporate culture is important. Look at the images they use on their corporate material, website, social media. Think about the language they use, is it informal? Professional? What image are they trying to project?                                                           

         What would it be like to work for this company? Is there a Twitter forum, Facebook page, LinkedIn connection you can engage with. If so, be sure to use the “right” language and a professional approach.

It is important to use impartial information about companies. A good source of information are databases. Here is a helpsheet that guides explains how to get company information from Business Source Complete and ABI Inform.

Whether you are thinking of working for a particular company or researching several potential options it is important to do your research. Learn about company culture, their products, services and clients, the industry in which the company operates, who are their customers, who are their suppliers? Find this out and more by looking at trade and industry news, general news and what the company has to say about itself.

Where do I look?

For Company and Industry information:

• Business Source Complete
• ABI/Inform 

For news:

• FT.com
• BBC News
• The Economist

Financial data:

• FT Share Index

For market research:

• Mintel
• Statista

What's it like to work there? Look at Times 100 Online Case Studies, Target Jobs, Glassdoor

Don't forget: Trade and professional associations, social media; Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In

Remember: Evaluate what you find: who is offering the information and why? Are they biased in anyway? Does the information conflict or agree with other material discovered about the company?

What does this information mean for you? Can you use this to impress an interview panel or company representative? Does it relate to your skills, talents and experiences?

It can also be useful to investigate what products or services the company is involved with, apart from identifying peer groups this can be an indication of how products are developing, whether particular markets are buoyant or not. Apart from their own websites, there are two sites that help you assess what products a company makes: