Researching your job field: Setting up your information sources

• Colleges
• CPA
• CFO
• MBA

Industry sources

• Professional associations
• Investment advisory
• Employers

Recruiters

• ABCDE Recruiters
• Top Class Agents
• Wunderkind Recruitment

Career information

• Employer jobs pages
• Industry employment sites
• Job ads (current)

Special information pages

• Newsletters
• Industry news sites
• Technical papers and research data

Simple, but it works well. The important thing is to avoid clutter, and keep everything findable and functional.

Computer records

Because much research involves personal contacts, a lot of the other information you gather in large amounts as research material is collected as hard copy. This comes in forms like letters, business cards, or things noted down on bits of paper, and the amount of paper it generates can create problems. The result is a mess, and it uses up a lot of space.

Contacts are particularly important, and losing information can be costly. You need to keep this information, and you need to make it searchable. A few simple computer documents can save a lot of time and effort.

Make a record of the important materials:

Contacts

• Name
• Title
• Organization
• Phone
• Email

Personal records

• Correspondence (these can be scanned for an electronic record)
• Correspondence references (always useful, and good for organization)
• Messages received
• Messages sent

These records operate like action files. They're extremely useful when you're researching on a time frame. You won't lose much of your information when you've got it organized like this. A lot of research is conducted on the phone, and you can keep track of your sources by using dates and references. It saves your contacts time at the other end to have this information handy, too.