Career Guidance

College View Careers Very extensive career guidance covering such areas as career planning, self-assessment, identifying your skills, internship opportunities, job search techniques, cover letters, resumes, interviewing, business etiquette, salary negotiation and becoming successful in your new job.

Career Journal from the Wall Street Journal. General career publications offering career-related news, columns, job hunting advice and other resources.

The Princeton Review Career Quiz (based on the Birkman Method). Rate 24 pairs of statements and then receive a summary of your general work preferences as well as specific careers that match those preferences. Requires free registration to receive complete results.

The Career Interests Game by John L. Holland. Identify which of six categories of individuals interests you. Then find out what careers match those categories.

Compensation

General Salary Guides

Salary Survey by BestJobsUSA.com. Select the profession that interests you from the column on the right. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (free).

SalaryExpert.com Select a profession, such as "Marketing Manager", and a geographic location to call up charts showing salary ranges.

Marketing Salary Guides

Agency and Corporate Advertising and Marketing Professionals (by salary range)
Public Relations Agency and Corporate Public Relations Professionals (average annual salaries. Further categorized by industry and geographic location)
Corporate Communications, Public Relations, and Investor Relations Professionals (average annual salaries by industry and company size)
Marketing and Sales Professionals

Company Information

By researching a company in advance, you'll be more prepared for a job interview. Even if you're not interviewing yet, you can decide if a company matches your work preferences.

Individual.com Provided by Individual, you can access information about approximately 65,000 companies. Just type in the name of a company and you'll see an entire resources page for that organization. Although many options are for paid subscribers only, here are some of the free information items:

• Company's primary industry, address, telephone numbers, Internet address (URL) and summary description
• Recent articles
• Press releases
• Stock information
• Rankings based on total sales, number of employees and other factors within the company's industry

Hoover's Lists information on "more than 11,000 of the largest public and private companies in the US and around the world. Each capsule includes a description of the company, address, officers, sales and employment figures and hyperlinks to more information, like financial reports, stock quotes, SEC filings and news searches." Even though the company descriptions for each capsule are brief, they include links to: news stories about the company, the company's Web site and major competitors.

CBS MarketWatch Choose from an extensive number of links about a company that interests you. After typing in the stock symbol or company name, access extensive data and analysis by category: "Quotes," "Profile," "News," "Chart," "Analyst," "Financials," "Discussion," and more.

Business Wire Select "Industry Specific News" or "Company Specific News" from the menu of topics to search for any previous stories by Business Wire about a specific industry or company.

First Call Center Another site where company earnings are listed. Try the "Earnings Estimate Monitor" to see earnings surprises, both positive and negative, between analyst forecasts and actual quarterly earnings by companies. There are also many other useful sections focusing on earnings data, price to earnings ratios, splits and dividends, revisions to earnings estimates and company analysis by First Call.

SiliconInvestor Information about technology stocks.

Corporate Financials Online Central location for linking to financial news from companies. Only a small fraction of all publicly-traded companies are listed, but maybe one that currently interests you is listed there.

Fortune 500 Fortune magazine's annual profile of the 500 largest U.S. corporations. For summary information on a company, select "Company List" and then click on the company of your choice.

Annual Reports Gallery Annual reports posted online for hundreds of companies.

Tips for Reading An Annual Report by the Annual Reports Library.