What is the Importance of Creating a Target Company List?
Based on my past 3 posts focused on our internal process of career creation, we are now moving to some tactical external activities that help support you in putting structure around your career creation.
I work with many career clients, and I am amazed at how many are not really strategic in how they are going about creating their next move. When we put attention on the internal criteria of what we desire to gain clarity, it is important to next put an external structure in place that supports us in staying present to those criteria and the feelings they create. This is what supports us in rewiring the brain and taking the actions that support those desires to show up in our environment.
Creating a target company list is important because it supports you in working for a company that is aligned to your values and expertise. A target company list can be any where from 20-100 companies; it evolves over time as you research companies and find out what they are really like.
This is the part of the career creation process that you have to have faith in because the companies on your target list don’t necessarily have open jobs. The reason these companies are on your list is because after researching them you have decided you like them based on them aligning with the key criteria you created in the previous post.
Did you know that 60% of jobs are not even posted? These are the jobs that are ideal to find out about, and you can do that when you penetrate a target list of companies. Once you have the list of companies, you then find 3-5 people within the organization you will reach out to for an informational conversation to find out more about the company, roles and people. It is an opportunity to build your network inside the organization with key leaders that hire for the types of roles you have expertise in. Your job is to cultivate relationships inside these organizations so when the position opens up, they call you instead of posting the job. To prove my point, I want to share a personal experience on this topic.
Prior to coaching, I worked as an executive retained recruiter for 12 years, and during those years, it was early in my career that I was looking for a new recruiting role while living in a small town outside San Francisco called Half Moon Bay (not a lot of recruiting opportunities in this small bedroom community). I was also teaching yoga; at one of my classes, I announced I was looking for an executive search position with a new company and would love it to be in Half Moon Bay as I didn’t want to commute to San Francisco, which was 30-40 minutes away.
One of my students had a friend that was a recruiter for a company that was opening an office in Half Moon Bay. She introduced me, and I landed the job. They had never posted the position because they hired me before having to advertise this opening. It was the start of my headhunting career in the high-tech field and set me up for a very successful career doing executive search.
Being strategic in a job search gives you much more focus, keeps your priorities front and center, and is a great way to put structure around your internal desires for your next role.
Here are a few resources you might find helpful when researching your target company list.
In the next blog, I will focus on salary intel for your role, and articulating your values in your communication. You won’t want to miss these great resources, so feel free to sign up for my newsletter and blogs, and let me know what would be helpful to you as you navigate your career.