Research and preparation  

Before you apply for a job or attend an interview, always research the company to give you the best chance of success.

'In my experience, being able to demonstrate a firm grasp of wider industry issues at an interview is a brilliant way to stand out' Ben Cotton, PR Consultant

A company’s website is always a good place to start, but other useful sources of information include:

• Company reports
• Press reports
• Sales information
• Recruitment information

Company reports

Annual and interim company reports include financial information as well as useful information about a company’s operations.

• Check the company’s website.
• Search http://www.annualreports.com/
• Request a copy from the company itself or ask the library or careers service to do this for you.
• Order reports from Companies House for a fee. 

Press reports and industry news

Press articles are a valuable source of information on a company or industry sector.

• Search for newspaper and trade press articles using the university’s Online Library. In particular newspaper databases and KEYNOTE for market intelligence reports.
• Check the Financial Times and the Economist.
• Subscribe to RSS feeds from the websites you are interested in – the news will be sent to you direct so you don't  have to continually return to the site.

• Use social bookmarking tools (i.e digg, stumbleupon, reddit to mark the material you might want to come back to and share with others.
• Search and subscribe to blogs (via Google Blog/News Search/Technorati) on topics that might interest you, or written by people working in your field. 
• Google Alerts - sign up to receive email updates of the latest Google results
• Use a feed reader – a kind of personal webpage - to collectively gather all the news, blogs and information into one place, i.e. Google Reader. Other tools such as HootSuite/tweetdeck could be used to monitor and post to multiple social networks/accounts

Sales information

Read the sales information on the company’s products and services. Company brochures and websites will give you an idea of what the company sells or the services it offers.

Recruitment information

Bigger companies often have information on the type of person that they recruit and what it’s like to work for them.

• Graduate recruitment websites will give you information on companies that are currently recruiting to graduate schemes.  For example, Prospects and Target jobs.
• Discussions forums - for example Rate my Placement, The Student Room, or see the company information on sites like http://www.linkedin.com/
• Visit our Occupations directory for links to sites relevant to your chosen career.
• Directories of graduate recruiters are available to take away from all careers centres.