Things You'll Need:
- The desire to investigate a company
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Step 1
First of all, a good initial place to start (especially with medium and large companies) is with the Better Business Bureau website. You can see if the company is a member and/or if there have been any complaints made against the business. This has personally saved me from several online scams that otherwise seemed very professional and legitimate.
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Step 2
If it's publicly traded, see if you can find a history of the company's stock. While this is not a sole indicator of how good or bad a company is, it will tell you if it's volatile, has had steady growth, is in decline, etc. Be sure to compare this to the overall history of the stock market to rule out conditions that seemed to impact across industries. Regardless of the company, I personally don't advocate single stocks just because it's "putting all your eggs in one basket."
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Step 3
Do an overall search just on the company name. Look over the company website, as well as websites that are giving feedback one way or the other. Keep in mind however that almost every company is going to have some negative (more people tend to get online to complain than praise any company), but serious customer or employee issues should be a red flag.
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Step 4
For smaller businesses, you may have to do some leg work beyond the Internet. The local Chamber of Commerce may be able to give you information over the phone in some cases, according to the size of its staff. For contract work, it is reasonable to ask for references before you have any work done that has to be paid up front.
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Step 5
If you're job searching, see if you can catch an employee outside of the location and ask them a few questions about daily life and the company's culture. It will save you a lot of time of finding out either way on your own.
