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Once you’ve selected your top companies, it’s time to do some digging. At this point, the Audience for your job-seeker personal brand is the entire company you’re targeting. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re expected to learn about every single person in a big company! Not only is that impossible, but it’s not necessary either.

Instead, you can think of the entire company as an “individual” with its own set of facts and attitudes. As a great marketing detective, you can take what you learn about a company and begin to piece together a profile of how it operates, just as you would if you were learning about one specific person. You’ll discover if the company has a relaxed, more casual atmosphere or a more structured, buttoned-down setting. You’ll find out if the company thinks that coming up with new ideas is important or if it wants employees to stick strictly to policy — that type of thing. Here are some of the ways you can dig deeper to find out more about the companies you’re interested in:

Talk, Talk, Talk. Take the time to ask your friends and other people you meet if they know anyone who currently works for, or formerly worked for, your target companies (your potential Audience). If the employee is someone your friend knows well, you could even call or e-mail that person to ask them a few questions about the company.

Meet and Greet. If you get the chance to attend an event where you’d be able to meet people who work at one of the companies you’ve targeted, don’t let the opportunity get away! Of course, in that kind of situation, it’s critical to keep up a professional image — even if it’s a casual event — because you’ll be meeting people face-to-face for the first time. If you pick up business cards at these events, make notes on the back about what the person said, what they looked like, and where you met them.

Search the Internet. Thanks to the worldwide web, it’s easier than ever to find out a lot about potential employers. The number of online directories has quadrupled in the past ten years. While looking over the company’s website is the absolute best first place to start, it still only scratches the surface of what you can find out about a company online. With just a few research skills, you can uncover an enormous amount of great information that you can use to put together a more detailed profile of your target companies.

Try typing the following into your search engine to discover more about a company:

[Company name] [your desired division or department]

[Company name] annual report

[Company name] press release

[Company name] event

[Company name] brochure

[Company name] newsletter

[Company name] e-zine

[Company name] charity

[Company name] values

[Company name] culture

Through these searches, you should be able to collect a lot of information, including:

•How does the company present itself in the media?

•What kinds of documents does the company publish?

•When you read the company’s annual reports, brochures, newsletters, and e-zines, what facts and attitudes do they tell you about the company?

You’ll be amazed at how much information you can find out about potential employers this way. What other aspects of a company are you interested in? Rev up Google, Yahoo, or YouTube, and see what you can find.

“Ratings” Lists. You can look up companies on a number of traditional “ratings” lists like Standard & Poor’s, Dun & Bradstreet, Dow Jones, Moody’s Investors Service, and Polk’s. These are services that check out companies all around the globe in order to help investors decide if they want to hand over any of their cold hard cash. I know that, as a college grad, you’re probably not investing(!), but in the searches that these companies do, they’ve uncovered a lot of great info that can come in handy for your job search. If you find accessing these lists online means you have to pay a fee, check out your college library to see if they have the printed versions of the lists that you can use for free.

Information that you get from these lists and from the company’s website will help you figure out the following:

•Is the company on the stock exchange, or is it owned by individuals? Family-owned?

•Does the company do business locally, across the U.S., or internationally?

•How long has the company been in business? Has it changed owners more than once?

•What other companies are its biggest competitors?

•Has the company grown in recent years, or is it facing tough times?

•What worldwide trends taking place today might have an impact on the company’s business?

Articles About the Company. Search for articles about the company on the Internet, too. You’ll probably find lots of online articles — even hundreds if it’s a large company. If an article is mentioned on the Internet, but you can only read it in print, see if your college library has a hard copy. Articles will most likely help you answer questions like:

•Has the company been in the news lately? If so, why? What are others saying and writing about the company?

•Has the company joined with another company or set up partnerships with any other companies?

•Has the company launched any new products or services?

•Has the company hired new top execs lately?

•What charities has the company supported, and what do these charities say about the company’s character and values?

Articles By or About Key People. Find the names of top executives on the company’s website, and try another Internet search for articles by or about some of those executives. Since it’s often the top management that sets up the company’s culture, what an exec says in an interview may tell you as much about the company as it tells you about him or her. Does the exec seem friendly in the article? Does he or she have a sense of humor? Articles like this will give you a good feeling for the company and what it’s all about.

You may even find articles that talk about a top manager before he or she joined the company. If this person could be your immediate boss or the head of your division, knowing this background will tell you a lot about the kind of people that the company likes to hire. You might even be able to find direct quotes from some executives about this person to give you an inside look at the kinds of behaviors they like or dislike. Even if this person doesn’t end up being your interviewer, by understanding more about a company’s execs, you’ll end up with a more in-depth profile of the company and its important players.

Articles will also give you a good feeling for the kind of experience the company is looking for. Find out the background of some of a company’s current employees, and you might start to see patterns in the types of people the company likes to hire. This kind of probing is definitely worth your time.

Check Out the Company Using Social Media. These days, most companies have their own social media listings on networks like Facebook or Twitter. Search for the company’s name on Facebook, and if they have a fan page, definitely become a fan! Some recruiters told me that they will even check to see if potential interviewees signed up on the company’s fan page or not. This is a great way to stick out and show your interest in the company as well as to find out all sorts of things about the company’s latest news, key players, and culture.

Companies are also releasing news on Twitter. You can search for a company’s name or a person at the company on Twitter or one of the many search engines that have been created for Twitter, like Twellow.com. You’ll probably find out what other people are saying about the company, too, and you may find someone who works there or who has interviewed with the company. See what kinds of hints they’ve left there about interviewing and what they learned from the interview, too.