An aircraft carrier is of course a mobile airport, which can make it difficult to find when you're trying to land on it. At Midway, the US carriers launched their planes and continued to the west toward the atoll, meaning that when the planes were ready to return the carriers were not where they were originally. How were the pilots able to find their carriers, or, in the case of the heavily damaged and eventually abandoned Yorktown, find an alternate carrier to land on?
Several methods were used. The simplest was to agree a rendezvous, where the aircraft that had been flown off could meet the carrier. Slightly more complex was the use of dead reckoning. In this the pilots were informed of the course the carrier planned to travel along, and the speed it planned to travel at. This allowed them to locate the carrier at any future time, by working out where along the course it was. If neither of these were practical - for example, because the carrier the pilots flew from had been sunk - carriers also carried radio homing beacons. These sent out a radio signal that could be detected by a plane giving the direction to the carrier, but could also be detected by hostile forces. Finally, should an aircraft be sufficiently lost, then the pilot could make a radio call to the carrier asking for its position. If the carrier had radar, then it could be used in combination with radio to direct the aircraft in. However, this was only done in cases of dire emergency, as doing so would make the carrier's position obvious to any eavesdroppers.
So fourthman gave you a very solid general overview. I would however like to comment a bit on the specific of Midway, and the USN in mid 1942 and how it worked.
Is that as you were told, the pilots would be given the course and rate of advance of the task force for after they launched. This was more than just the speed the carrier would be going at, as like at Midway a carrier would speed up, slow down, and often have to turn 180 in order to launch or recover aircraft, slowing its rate of advance. There is some debate on if Hornet's air crews were given bad info and just told the speed the carrier would cruise at unadjusted for these operations in the haste to launch, thus making their return problematic.
In instances where carriers had to move or alter plans they would send a destroyer or two ahead to the planned rendezvous to redirect aircraft or pickup any that had to ditch. this was used for instance at Eastern Solomons to recover the late day strikes.
As mentioned the carriers would use homing beacons. But their reliability wasn't great, and sometimes the receivers in the aircraft were temperamental. Also the Zed Baker receiver in USN aircraft at Midway required climbing to several thousand feet to get a good signal that far away. That cost precious fuel for aircraft that were relatively short legged or at the limits of their range. Also an issue because after their bomb, torp, or escort runs virtually all USN aircraft escaped the Kido Butai at low altitude. So if you could group up into a flight of aircraft one or a few could climb and the rest remain low, especially the lumbering torpedo bombers and fuel starved Wildcats. But conversely the ability to remain in a group was important. Hornet's fighter squadron suffered greater than 50% casualties because they couldn't find the carrier and as one aircraft would have to drop down to prepare to ditch usually at least its wingman would go with it or the entire flight.
Her dive bombers stuck together with the CAG but eventually half left him too, and the force fractured in an attempt to locate home base. Many simply made it and landed on Midway, some had to ditch, and some even did make it back to the carrier on fumes.
Yorktown was actually the carrier with the least amount of issues launching and recovering aircraft at Midway. In part because she was the one with the most recent combat experience on ship and in the airwing. In general her strike group just like Enterprises returned in small bunches towards the US fleet, aircraft grouping up however they could, and several ended up over TF-16 anyway to land, the rest were directed there from TF-17 and the damaged Yorktown which was essentially just over the horizon from her sisters. The destroyer Hammon additionally kept station with the evacuated carrier even as the rest of the force drew away in order to keep watch, and aid in directing aircraft as needed.
An excellent overview of carrier operations at this time for the USN can be found in John Lundstrom's First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from pearl Harbor to Midway.