Evaluating a company or opportunity
From HPAlumnipedia
From the HPAlumnipedia (www.hpalumnipedia.com) on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 18:21 • Page last modified: 2/7/2008
HPAlumnipedia > Finance > Advice > Evaluating a company or opportunity
For current discussions, go to: HPAA Finance Forum
Curt Gowan, Revised February 2008
To quickly evaluate any company you might do business with – such as a business opportunity, a job posting, or a career consultant:
1. Read the company's site carefully for clues:
a. Are both a street address and phone number given for the company?
b. Look at their press release section. How recently was the last release?
c. If it is a paid service, is there a low-cost, short-term trial?
2. Google for major issues:
Here are two key tools for online research...
- Google Advanced Search helps you narrow the search if there are too
many hits. http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
- Get the Google Toolbar -- it makes searching much quicker by including a "Search
Within the Site" button, search for terms in the text on a page, and a highlighter. It is available for both IE and Firefox. http://toolbar.google.com
These are very quick checks to make:
a. Enter the company name (in quotation marks if more than one word) and "lawsuit" on Google.
i.e. [ "Supercalifragilistic Recruiting" lawsuit ]
b. Also run it with the word "scam."
i.e. [ "Supercalifragilistic Recruiting" scam ]
c. And run it with the word "complaint."
Of course, any big company gets sued regularly and has angry customers who can post anything they want -- you must read the actual items to see if they cause you concern.
3. Run the company against scam-tracking sites:
a. Run the company name at the Ripoff Report site: http://www.ripoffreport.com/search.asp .
b. Search the Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/search . For example, entering Hewlett Packard there will yield the Jornada color display issue, among other things.
c. Better Business Bureaus are local mediation organizations funded by local businesses. They list non-member and member businesses – a company may have many complaints and still be a member. BBB listings are often obscurely worded, for example: "8 complaints. 4 were closed as Assumed Resolved. 3 were closed as No Response. 1 was closed as Unpursuable." The local BBB databases are linked with one search at: http://search.bbb.org/search.html
4. Make other searches:
a. Enter the company name on Google (in quotation marks if more than one word.) If the company generates too many listings, experiment with additional qualifiers to reduce the number of hits to a manageable level. For example, entering one MLM company name with "statistics" yielded a company document indicating that only 4.2% of their members are at or above the "Director V" level, where they average $17,709 per year in income.
b. Search the Internet newsgroup discussions http://groups.google.com/groups . Since one person with a vendetta can post many messages under different names, you need to read the actual items to see if they cause you concern.
c. Search for the company's street address on Google. If there are dozens of other companies at that address, run the address with the additional phrase (postal OR mailboxes OR box OR PMB) to see if the address is a UPS Store or other maildrop. If the company is representing itself as more than a one- or two-person business, this is not a good sign -- especially not good if the company uses the term "Suite" for a box number. [Be sure to include the parentheses and capitalize each 'OR' in your search.]
d. Check the mailing address used on their domain registration. A hidden address -- with wording like "private registration" or "Domains by Proxy" -- means either that it is a home-based business that doesn't have a post office box or maildrop ...or that, for some reason, the business doesn't want to be findable. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois
e. Enter the name of the company officers, directors, and founders (in quotation marks) in Google. Often very enlightening as to the personality of the company.
5. If...
a. If the company is public, look up their public Securities and Exchange Commission filings at http://www.sec.gov www.sec.gov . A company's 10K annual report to the SEC (not to be confused with the slick Annual Report to shareholders) discloses information that is available in no other way, including pending litigation – and financial details buried in the footnotes. For example, one multi-level marketing firm disclosed in a 10Q that they have 85,000 members – indicating that their upline is rather full.
b. If a business opportunity, read the FTC articles on business opportunities at www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/bizopps/coninfo.html.
c. If a franchise, here are some articles to read: [1], [2]
d. If a network marketing company, check www.mlmsurvivor.com and make Google searches as described above. "...when the neighborhood is turned into a marketplace, something precious is lost... which is not easily regained... the reflective reader would do well to think twice about the value of friends, family, community..." – from www.vandruff.com
e. If claiming to be a headhunter, here are links to articles that members have suggested. "What's the difference between career marketing companies, headhunters, employment agencies, temporary help services, executive counseling services, and job listing services?" http://www.hpalumnipedia.com/wiki/Companies_involved_in_job_hunting
f. If claiming to be a too good to be true job offer, see this article explaining how posted resumes and fake websites are used to create fraudulent job offers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012501435.html?sid=ST2008012501460
814 2/4/08
