Every Job Hunt Begins with Market Research

There is a way to do research that allows you to capture the information you need and make it immediately useful to you. You must have a process to manage your overall research.

Three ways to do it:

Researching Your Industry

Researching your industry provides a context for assessing individual target organizations, and also verifies or corrects your perception of your industry. Be prepared to reassess your career goal in light of what you discover. Emerging industry trends have the potential to limit or enhance your career. Your command of current industry information makes you an attractive conversation partner to the insiders you want to meet.

Here are some basic questions to guide you when researching your industry:

• What markets and organizations constitute my industry?

 

• What are the overall trends, challenges and opportunities that will have an effect on them?

 

• What innovations in the industry may signal changes ahead?

 

• Are my career goals consistent with what is happening in the industry?

 

• Is my current industry choice still the best choice? What others may be possible choices?

 

• Who are the major players in my targeted geographical area? How do they differ? How are they the same?

 

• What issues do each of them face? Are the issues the same or different?

How to research your industry

A great deal of industry information can be acquired through reading industry journals, trade magazines and news articles on companies within an industry. In conducting industry research, Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes or North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes can be useful. Industry associations sometimes publish surveys and forecasts.

Include on your list industries you know nothing about, but would like to investigate further.

Much can be learned by including questions that are industry-specific, based on what you have learned through your networking conversations. Questions about trends are particularly important when talking with industry insiders.

Researching a Target Company

Before initiating any contact with your targeted organizations, you need to be prepared to present yourself in the most effective way possible and to explore how you might best contribute to a particular organization. This requires constantly researching your top 10 targets. This will not only prepare you for an interview, but will also give you the ammunition you need to get the interview in the first place.

Perhaps most important of all, you will have the information you need to make an informed choice about what organization you will ultimately join and how to prioritize your search efforts in the meantime. Think carefully about what you already know about an organization and what you need to uncover. Asking good questions is the toughest (but most important) part of research.

Here are some basic questions to guide you when researching your target companies:

• What is the full name of the organization? Where is it located? How large is it (in terms of revenue, number of employees, product lines)?

 

• What industry is it in? What products does it make or what services does it provide?

 

• How long has it been in business? What has its growth pattern been? How well is it doing right now?

 

• Who are the competitors? Where does the company stand in its industry?

 

• Who are the key executives? Who are the hiring managers?

 

• What needs does this organization have that I might be able to fill? (If you have not read anything explicit on this subject, what inferences can you make?)

How to research a target company

• Get a copy of the annual report or 10K for each of your target companies by mail or through their Web sites.

 

• Use sources like Dun & Bradstreet for financial information on privately held companies that do not issue annual reports.

 

• Use online or web-based services. Electronic sources are usually a very efficient way of gathering articles about the companies and people you are interested in.

 

• Stay current by reading newspapers and journals. Be alert for articles on companies in the industries you are targeting. Ask friends to keep their eyes open for articles on your targets.

 

• Have specific questions ready. Exactly what do you want to know?

 

• Bookmark and review the individual web sites of your target organizations. Make sure you go to their employment or job listings frequently.

The outcome of your research: knowing enough to decide where to place the organization on your target list (or eliminate it from consideration) and to interview well when the opportunity arises.

Researching the Issues

Researching the current issues in organizations, industries and professions can help you prioritize your target list by identifying organizations likely to need what you have to offer. It can also make networking easier by identifying people who share your interests and by giving you more information to offer your networking contacts.

An example of this kind of research is the human resources professional, with experience in self-directed work teams, who researches the use of work teams. Articles on self-directed work teams may reveal the names of organizations and people using such teams. They may also reveal organizational needs relating to teams and information on who is succeeding with teams (and who is not) and why.

How to research the issues

• Conduct a literature search on the issue or topic you are trying to learn about. You can use the Internet to do this. Your public library also offers these resources and many libraries also have a reference librarian that can get you started.

 

• Determine if there are any web sites devoted to your topic. However, use caution - try to determine the origin, authority and date of any information you find on the web.

 

• Identify an industry or trade association that is likely to have information about the issue you are investigating. Call the association to see what information it can provide or direct you to.

 

• Identify and contact experts on a topic, such as people who are quoted in articles, who have written or spoken on the topic, who teach courses on the topic (determine which colleges have degree-granting programs that might include your topic) and others who might also be conducting research on the topic.

 

• Finally, be very familiar with the issues facing your target companies. You need to have a good sense of these issues so that you can speak intelligently to their needs. Being focused on the issues facing your target companies will make you an informed conversation partner with inside contacts and a more attractive candidate in actual interviews.