Shell Oil Company Research Project

Company Research Project (10 points)

Completed Answer Sheet and PDF of article found in ABI/INFORM must be submitted to Dropbox in CANVAS by start of class on ____________.

Learning how to research a company gives you skills to use when preparing for an interview or when asked to do company comparisons in a class. Researching companies is also a great way to learn how businesses operate and how Smeal majors relate to business functions.

For this assignment, you will research a company from the list provided by your instructor. All of these companies have a strong connection with Smeal as a Corporate Partner and/or by hiring many of our students.

RESEARCH DETAILS

You must use the following sources: Hoover’s, ABI/Inform, Vault Career Library, Glassdoor, Smeal Internship Evaluations, Smeal Career Connections Events Calendar, the company’s official website, and Penn State Fall Career Days site. You may also use other legitimate sources such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and/or Twitter as needed.

For Hoover’s, ABI/Inform and Vault Career Library:

· Go to the Penn State University Libraries Home Page https://libraries.psu.edu/

· Select Databases by Title (A-Z) under the Research column

· Select Hoover’s, ABI/Inform or Vault

· Log in as you would for Canvas (IMPORTANT: you will need to set up a separate free account in Vault - you can use your PSU email and a password of your choosing)

HELP WITH RESEARCH

If you are having trouble using the library’s website or in locating the information you need to answer the questions, please contact librarians in the Schreyer Business Library via email or in person:

3rd Floor, Paterno Library Business Building Atrium

Monday–Friday 9am–5pm Monday–Thursday 1:30–4:30pm (will not be there during holidays or when career fairs are in the atrium)

GRADING SCALE

All questions are worth .5 points unless otherwise noted. Questions with (Recommended) have no point value but represent areas that you can use to learn more in order to differentiate yourself when you speak with the company.

Points Available per Part:

Part 1 2.0

Part 2 1.5

Part 3 2.5

Part 4 3.5

Part 5 0.5

Total 10.0

COMPANY RESEARCH PROJECT (10 POINTS)

PART 1 (2 points): HOOVER’S

Hoover’s (Log in through https://libraries.psu.edu/)

Hoover’s provides company information. Type the company name in the “All Categories” search bar exactly as written in the company list provided by your instructor and hit enter. Multiple listings will often appear in the search results. (NOTE: the $USD amount that shows to the right of the company name represents their most recent revenue/sales amount in US dollars). For this assignment please select the listing that is labeled as a headquarters, is located in the United States and has the highest dollar amount in the sales column. Once you have clicked on the appropriate company name, you will be directed to the “Company Index” which has all of the information you will need to answer the questions in Part 1.

Use HOOVER’S to answer the following:. Please use US locations for all companies

1. What is the United States URL for their corporate company website? IMPORTANT: If you have a consumer products/services company you may have to scroll down to the bottom of the website and click on ‘About Us’ or something similar to be directed to the corporate website if you’re not there initially. (Feel free to email your instructor if you are having trouble with this). You will use it for Part 3 of this assignment.

2. Read the information in the company description section and summarize in your own words what you found in 2-3 sentences (NOTE: if you just cut and paste from Hoover’s for this question you will lose points). Make sure you also include the company’s products and services. A reader should have a good understanding of the company after reading your summary.

3. According to Hoover’s, what is this company’s primary industry?

4. List ALL of their top competitors provided (usually 3 are listed in the overview). If you don’t recognize a name, click on it to learn more.

5. (Recommended) While you are in Hoover’s check out its various sections so you’ll know how to find additional details and financial data about your company. If it’s a public company (has a stock that trades on a stock exchange like NYSE or NASDAQ) and you want to really impress the company’s recruiters, see if its current stock price is near its high or low for the last 52-week period and research why so you’ll be able to discuss it with them in an interview.

PART 2 (1.5 points): ABI/INFORM

ABI/Inform (Log in through https://libraries.psu.edu/)

ABI/Inform provides online access to articles from the Wall Street Journal as well as from leading business periodicals. You will use this database to find an interesting article about your company. Click the “advanced search” tab at the top. Type your company name (only put in the name and not LLP, LLC, Inc., etc). in the first search box. In the dropdown box to the right of your company name click on the arrow and select “Document Title-TI.” In the Publication date dropdown box click on the arrow and select “Last 12 months.” Scroll down the page to the Source Type and select “Magazines, Newspapers and Trade Journals” (this will help narrow down your results to articles about the company). Click on Search and scroll down through the results and find an article that provides insight on the company that you could use to create a question to ask them at a career fair (you may have to go through a few pages to find a good one). Make sure the article is something interesting about the company and NOT a report that your company produced about another company or an article about company holdings of its stock, a few sentences on its earnings or one of its investment funds. (NOTE: you will be graded on the quality of the article so you may need to go through a few pages to find a good one).

Use ABI/INFORM to find an interesting article related to your company from the last 12 months and create a thoughtful question that you could ask a recruiter at a career fair or in an interview . Select one that will provide good insight into the company. This is your opportunity to differentiate yourself and show the company that you have a more thorough understanding of them than other students that you are competing against. You MUST base your question on the article. You won’t get credit for general questions like “What do you look for in a candidate, How do you progress in the company, What opportunities are available in your company, What advice do you have for me, etc.”

Click on ‘Full Text’ and read the article. You will be graded on the appropriateness of the article and the question.

1. In the upper right of the ABI/Inform database you will see “Save as PDF”. Click on this, save the article as a PDF and upload it to CANVAS along with this complete answer sheet.

2. In the same upper right box of the ABI/Inform database, click on “cite” and copy/paste the citation into your answer sheet.

3. Come up with a career fair/interview question that uses information you learned in this article.

PART 3 (2.5 points): COMPANY WEBSITE and PENN STATE FALL CAREER DAYS WEBSITE

Use the COMPANY WEBSITE URL you listed in question 1 in Part 1 for this section. You will need to really look around the company’s website and do some digging for this information. IMPORTANT: you must answer the questions in your own words - you will lose points if you just cut and paste information from the company’s website. You will find it extremely worthwhile to really investigate their site.

1. Click on tabs such as About Us, Who We Are, Get to Know Us, Our Purpose, Code of Conduct, Corporate Culture, What We Stand For/Believe, Core Values, etc. and read about the company. Summarize their mission statement/vision/purpose/goals and core values in 2-3 sentences.

2. Does community service/corporate responsibility/citizenship (different from diversity) appear to be important to them? Briefly describe 1 specific example of this or a program that they support?

3. (1 point) Go to Smeal’s Career and Corporate Connections website https://careerconnections.smeal.psu.edu/ Click on the blue “corporate partners” box. Click on your company’s logo.

a. List and DESCRIBE 1 full time career/specific job position at this company appropriate for recent college graduates in business that interests you.

b. Does the company offer summer internships to undergraduate business majors? If so, summarize what you found about their program, even better if you can list and describe one.

c. (Recommended) Many companies have videos to help you better understand career opportunities at their company, watch them if they are available.

Penn State Fall Career Days

Penn State hosts career fairs at the BJC in the fall and in the spring for full time and summer internship/co-op positions. You can find out if your company participated (and what positions they were hiring for and majors they were interested in) by going to http://careerfairs.psu.edu/fall/ and clicking on the “I am a Student/Alum” tab.

4. Find your company in the Penn State Fall Career Days website http://careerfairs.psu.edu/fall/. Did they participate in the career fair on Tues, Sept 11th (non-technical full-time) and/or Wed Sept 12th (internship/co-op)? If yes, list sample positions listed when you click on them on the Fall Career Fairs website.

PART 4 (3.5 points): VAULT CAREER LIBRARY, GLASSDOOR, SMEAL INTERNSHIP EVALUATION databases and the SMEAL CAREER CONNECTIONS EVENT CALENDAR

Vault Online Career Library (Log in through https://libraries.psu.edu/)

Vault Career Library provides information and advice on companies, industries and careers from surveys of actual employees and students who interned there. Type the company’s name into the search box and hit enter (you may need to use a variation of the name listed on the sheet). Select the appropriate result (you want the main one for the company) and click on it. This will bring you to the dashboard where you will use information from the tabs across the top in the assignment. If you’re fortunate enough to have a company with a separate internship link, it is highly recommended that you check it out (for a few, the internship link will be the only place with data).

Vault Career Library is free when you log in through the PSU Libraries website, but you will need to create a separate Vault account in order to have full access to the website. You can use your Penn State email address and a password of your choosing for the Vault account. You will need both every time you access the site. The Vault Career Library also has information on industries, resumes, cover letters, interviewing and networking which will be very useful to you throughout your time at Penn State.

Many of the companies have a separate entry for summer internships so feel free to add information about those as well.

1. List the latest VAULT rankings that appear in the OVERVIEW. Share a few of the ‘Uppers,’ ‘Downers’ and ‘Buzz/Bottom Line’ comments from the Overview if they are available, otherwise put N/A.

2. Go to the EMPLOYEE REVIEWS section and list how many stars the company received for its Overall Company Rating.

3. Read through the EMPLOYEE REVIEWS and list a few of the ‘Uppers,’ ‘Downers’ and ‘Comments’ that you found helpful (scan through the data and include ones that seem more specific to your company and not a generic comment that could be said about many companies). Please add information from their internship section here as well.

4. (Recommended) The EMPLOYEE REVIEW tab also includes information on Interview Questions that the company asks and Salaries and Perks data. There is also valuable information and insight in the other tabs available for this company (e.g., Survey Says, Why Work Here, Jobs, etc.) as well as in the Company Internship section, if there is one. You should also check out the sections in Vault on Interviewing, Networking, Industries and Resumes. All of them will be very helpful to you in the future.

Glassdoor

According to its website, glassdoor.com, “holds a growing database of millions of company reviews, CEO approval ratings, salary reports, interview reviews and questions, benefits reviews, office photos and more ... shared by those who know a company best - the employees. It also lists millions of jobs available.” Click on the “Company Reviews” tab at the top of the website. Type your company name in the search box and select the appropriate one from the number of company options displayed.

Glassdoor is free but you will most likely have to set up an account to access the data for this assignment. Like Vault, you can use your Penn State email address and a password of your choosing for the Glassdoor account. It is a community website, i.e., the more data you provide to/share with the website, the more access you will gain to information on the site. In addition to its website, Glassdoor is also available via its mobile app on iOS and Android platforms.

For Glassdoor, click on the “Company Reviews” tab at glassdoor.com. Type your company name in the search box and select the appropriate one from the number of company options displayed.

5. Go to the GLASSDOOR website at glassdoor.com. Click on the “COMPANY REVIEWS” tab listed across the top. Type your company name in the search box and select the appropriate one from the number of company options displayed.

a. What star rating did it get in the company reviews section?

b. Read through the interview section and list an interview question that stood out to you.

Smeal Website

For the Smeal Internship Evaluation, just click on the link provided and select ‘Search the evaluations given by other students.’ Enter your company name (as you are typing you will see companies appear in the dropdown), MAKE SURE YOU SELECT IT FROM THE DROPDOWN BOX (NOTE: more than one variation of the name will most likely pop up so check out evaluations for ALL of them because each will have data) and click on search. If you leave the other search boxes blank you will get more results. Click on the magnifying glass symbol next to each entry to view details.

6. Smeal has a website https://php.smeal.psu.edu/corp/experience/index.php that contains actual Smeal student evaluations and comments on their internships at different companies. Read through the submissions and pick out a few comments about the job content, major responsibilities & duties that are helpful in understanding what it would be like to work there. Also include feedback provided on the internship and company from the submissions for your company.

7. Visit the Smeal Career Connections Event Calendar https://careerconnections.smeal.psu.edu/events/ and find out if your company is coming to Smeal this fall. If so, please list ALL of the events listed on the calendar (day, time, location and title) that they are sponsoring/hosting.

PART 5 (.5 point): LINKEDIN, TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK – use to answer the following questions:

1. Many companies use social media to educate and connect with potential employees. Visit ALL of your company’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube accounts (many companies have links on their website to these accounts). Do they use social media for recruiting or to provide career information/help? If so, is there anything that you like or find useful/effective in helping you to develop a better understanding of the company and whether you would like to work for them?

COMPANY RESEARCH PROJECT ANSWERS

Answer Sheet and PDF of Article found in ABI/INFORM must be submitted to Dropbox in CANVAS by ___________________________

Your Name:

Your Company:

Please put all of your answers in the appropriate spaces below (after the “-” ). Submit only these pages as a saved document and a PDF of the article you found in ABI/INFORM to the Dropbox in CANVAS.

PART 1 (2 POINTS) - Hoovers

1. Company website URL -

2. Company description (2-3 sentences) -

3. Primary industry -

4. Competitors (3) -

PART 2 (1.5 POINTS) - ABI/INFORM

1. Make sure you print out and attach your article to the answer sheets

2. Article source citation in APA format -

3. Career fair/interview question -

PART 3 (2.5 POINTS) - Company website and Fall Career Days

1. Company mission/vision/purpose/goals/core values (2-3 sentences) -

2. Specific example of community service/corporate responsibility/citizenship -

3a. List and describe a full-time job for recent college graduates in business that interests you -

3b. What do they offer for summer internships for business students; if possible, describe one that interest you -

4. BJC Fall Career Days - days participating and sample positions (put N/A if they didn’t attend) -

PART 4 (3.5 POINTS) - Vault, Glassdoor, Smeal Internship Evaluations and Smeal Career and Corporate Connections events calendar

1. Vault overview rankings, uppers, downers and buzz/bottom line -

2. Vault employee reviews overall company rating (stars) -

3. Vault employee reviews uppers, downers and comments -

5a. Glassdoor company reviews star rating -

5b. Glassdoor sample interview question from your company -

6. Smeal Internship Evaluation comments about your company and information about an internship, including the duties/responsibilities and job content -

7. Company’s appearance(s) on Smeal Career Connections Events calendar (day, time, location and title of event) -

PART 5 (.5 POINTS)

1. Comments on your company’s use of social media -

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