Page 69 - 301 Best Questions to Ask on Your Interview, Second Edition

THE RULES OF THE GAME

likely find information for shareholders, financial reports, presen-
tations, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. I
suggest you start with the presentations. These are generally Pow-
erpoint presentations that company officials give to shareholders.
They often summarize information with easy-to-understand graphs
that you can use as the basis for very informed questions.

As long as you have the search engine open, why not pop in the
name of the interviewer? You’ll probably find some interesting infor-
mation. You may discover where the interviewer worked before
(human resources professionals tend to move around a lot), where
he or she went to college, what professional organizations he or she
is affiliated with, and other useful information. Be careful about how
you use this information. You don’t want interviewers to think you’re
stalking them. On the other hand, the more you know about the
interviewer, the better. And if you can find some common ground, it
can’t hurt.

OTHER WEB RESOURCES

While a company’s website is chock-full of information, it is not com-
prehensive. Few company websites include information that is truly
critical of the company. For more objective information, there are
hundreds of free resources you can consult. It is beyond the scope of
this book to discuss online corporate research strategies, but the fol-
lowing resources are what I use when I want to research a company:

www.google.com/alerts
The first thing I do when I’m interested in a subject is to create
a Google Alert. Google Alerts are e-mail updates of the latest
relevant Google results generated by your choice of query or
topic. Google Alerts are a great way of:

• Monitoring a developing story
• Keeping current on a competitor or industry
• Getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• Keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

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