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From the HPAlumnipedia – www.hpalumnipedia.com.  The HP Alumni Association is an independent volunteer organization. Not endorsed or supported by Hewlett-Packard. Content is the responsibility of the authors. HPAA may, but is not obligated to, monitor or review content. By using this site you accept the site terms. © 2010 HPAA.

Curt Gowan, Revised February 2008

Here's how to quickly evaluate any company you might do business with – such as a business opportunity, a job posting, a career consultant, or an insurance or financial company.

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?

d. Are there grammar or spelling errors on the site? Do the pages display properly in your browser? Do you click on links that come up with missing pages?

e. Are there convincing, well-written biographies of the managers of the company on their website? Judging by the photos, would you want to work with them in person?

Remember the famous cartoon: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog

2. Quick googling 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 IE, Firefox, and Mac. http://toolbar.google.com

These are very quick and easy 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 ]

If the company name is made up of joined words, use quotation marks around it
i.e. [ "Supercalifragilistic" lawsuit ] to avoid sites that refer to "Super Califragilistic"

You may need to add a city or state to remove hits for other companies with the same name
i.e. [ Supercalifragilistic "San Jose" ]

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. 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.

b. 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 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.)

c. 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

If you don't get good info on that site, find the specific registrar for the domain name in the worldwide master domain directory -- http://www.internic.net/whois.html -- and then run the "whois" search on the site of the specific registrar for that domain. (Every registrar is required to provide a whois search -- but the button to do it is often hidden in very tiny print at the bottom of the registrar's homepage.)

d. 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. For specific types of business...

a. If it is a public company, look up their public Securities and Exchange Commission filings at http://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 or franchise, read the FTC articles on business opportunities at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/invest/business.shtm

Additional articles to read: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/invest/business.shtm http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/hp_alumni_career/message/14433 http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_4842595

Is the primary purpose of the company's website to sell their products and refer customers to their agents/distributors/franchisees? Or is their primary business the sale of "business opportunities" rather than actual products or services?

c. 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 http://www.vandruff.com/mlm

d. 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

e. 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

f. If selling insurance, check that they are licensed to sell insurance in your state. For example, here's the site for California: http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0200-industry/0070-check-license-status/ Just google something like [ insurance license <name of state> ] and the state site will come right up.

2/4/08 814
11/13/08 1,536
11/25/08 1,604
3/21/09 2,214
8/22/09 2,450
9/26/09 2,555
3/15/10 2,636