Southern California Job Market : Emergency Medicine : How to Get the Lowdown in Advance

You’re about to have a job interview. Doing your homework can make all the difference.

* Public companies publish annual and quarterly reports. The less glossy 10k and 10q versions are often more revealing. Ask investor relations for copies.

* Try “Hoover’s Handbook: Profiles of Over 500 Major Corporations,” or Dun & Bradstreet’s “Million Dollar Directory.”

* Valueline and Standard & Poor’s publish company reports.

* If you have a stockbroker, ask for any recent reports from its research department.

* The Business Periodicals Index and the F&S; Index by Prediscasts contain references to trade journal articles.

* Dow Jones News Retrieval, an electronic database, has articles, financial data and reports by securities analysts.

Getting information on smaller private companies is harder, but many libraries can help you find relevant articles.

The Los Angeles Public Library’s main branch downtown has an extensive business collection, as do main public libraries in Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Culver City. The Los Angeles County Library in Norwalk also has a lot of material.

The Management Library at UCLA is open to the public too.