If you haven't yet identified a job, go to Job Sites to Check Out, which will give you plenty of links to try.
The Riley Guide has a useful web page for targeting and
researching employers:
http://www.rileyguide.com/research.html
You may find it helpful to work your way through that page before starting this
exercise.
If you have trouble with this assignment, you may contact librarian David Moore, mooredp@uah.edu (or phone 824-6285).
1. The job ad is the first place to look for information about a job for which you are applying. Go through it carefully looking for key words. Make sure that both your resume and job letter mention all key words for required attributes, and any additional ones for desirable attributes (usually described as "a plus").
Fill in key words from the job ad _________________________________________
2. Look up your job in
Occupational Outlook Quarterly.
You can search for articles about the industry or the job here.
You can also look up your job in the
Occupational Outlook Handbook.
You may need to play around with the search.
For example, "technical writer" came
up with zero matches, but "technical AND writer" got 3 hits.
Note: You can also search Occupational Outlook Quarterly through the Salmon Library's subscription service. If you are working from home, you will need to log in to the proxy server. The following subscription databases index articles in OOQ: ABI Inform, BusinessFile ASAP, InfoTrac, Expanded Academic, and EBSCOhost MasterFILE Premier.
Job title (for which you got results): _______________________
List at least one useful article and where it is found: _________________________________________________
3. The quickest way to find current information about a local business is to
look them up in a newspaper index. You may learn that the company has
recently won some award, or is leading the industry in something. These
are good things to mention in a job letter. (If you find out negative
things, you may want to look for another job! Definitely don't mention
anything negative in the letter.). The best database for searching
newspapers is Lexis-Nexis, accessible from the library's online databases page.
(You can also look up your company in Job Bank, a reference book at the
reference desk.)
Indexes checked: __________________________________________
List one useful source found: _________________________________
If your company is not listed in any of the indexes you checked, substitute the industry for the company name and search again. For example, if Joe Blow IT Services hasn't got a listing, Information Technology will.
4. You can also find business information about many companies in reference databases.
If your company is a major business, look them up in
Hoover's Company Profile Database
If your company is not a major business, look up the industry in
Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage
Name of the database you checked: ____________________________
Summarize the useful information you found (even if not useful, list information that will show you looked it up!): _____________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________