- Using directories and other resources to develop a high-priority list of 50-200 employers;
- Gathering specific information about each organization before an interview, and conducting in-depth studies of organizations that offer you a job.
The size of an organization is also important to many people. Some must pursue larger companies because only larger organizations hire people with their specialty. For instance, a company will usually have at least 75 employees before a personnel manager is hired, and around 200 before a wage-and-salary administrator is hired. Since 95% of all companies have less than 100 employees, we can consider an organization with 100 employees fairly large. Many resources provide codes which help you know approximately how many employees an organization has.
Stage One: Developing Your High-Priority List of Employers
As you come across appropriate organizations, write down whatever information the directory provides. They typically provide the name of the organization, its address and phone number, the number of employees, its products or services, and its sales volume.
Next, decide what size of organization you want to work for. The work some people do is available only in organizations of over 100 employees. These people would target companies with 100 or more employees. A person who wanted to avoid really large organizations would target companies with 100-250 employees.
Next, decide the maximum distance you are willing to commute. If the maximum commute you'd accept would be 35 minutes each way, you would use that as a guide to select organizations. For a truly outstanding company you might be willing to accept a longer com mute, but there would be relatively few exceptions.
Once you've made your decisions, you will be ready to utilize the many directories available in your library.
Stage Two: Researching Your Top 20 Employers
Once you have compiled and prioritized your list of 50-200 employers, it's time to do some preliminary research on each of your top-20 organizations. You may be saying to yourself, "But I don't know anyone who works for my target companies." While this may be true, you can be guaranteed that someone among your friends and contacts does know someone who works for your target companies. An interesting study by Stanley Milgram indicates that nearly all adults have between 500 and 1,000 contacts. "Contacts" include personal friends, relatives, present and former coworkers, schoolmates, church members, social club members, people you do business with (hair stylist, mechanic, banker), and even people you barely know. People who collect business cards (a very useful pastime) will probably have more than 1,000 contacts. Using two links in the chain (your contacts plus your contacts' contacts) could lead to between 250,000 (500 X 500) and 1,000,000 (1,000 x 1,000) contacts. Add a third link and you get between 125 million and one billion. The article went on to describe experiments in which people used contacts to communicate with a specific person thousands of miles away, usually requiring only two links.
While you are not being recommended here that you contact your 500 contacts and ask each of them to contact their 500, the above example demonstrates the wide range of contacts that is available to you. What it boils down to is this: if you want to badly enough, you can get direct information about almost any organization in the country using only one to two links.
Once you have your list of target organizations, call your contacts and ask them who they know in those organizations. If they don't know anyone, ask them to ask around for you. It's okay to ask for favors. After all, you'd do the same for them. Once you get a name, call the person to learn as much as you can about the organization. Be sure to mention the name of the person who referred you or your new con tact may be rather cool and reserved. Also try to establish rapport before asking probing questions. For instance, you might start by asking the person his or her overall view of the company,
Competitors are valuable sources of information, but they may have some obvious biases. When talking to competitors, talk to sales and management people. Employees at lower levels seldom keep up on competitors. For example, the purchasing manager of a competitor probably belongs to the same association as the purchasing manager in your target company: they may even know each other. Sales people are helpful because it's their business to know about competitors. As you're picking up information, determine whether the person is sincere. If the person shares both positives and negatives about your target organization, instead of just negatives, the information will probably prove useful.
Suppliers and customers may be harder to locate than competitors, but a few well-placed phone calls can reveal them. Most of your target organizations probably fall in a few industries. Call several companies that would be likely to purchase the products or services of your target organizations and ask if they buy from any of them. It's very possible that they buy from several of your target firms since an organization rarely buys everything from just one source. Each of these companies will give you a slightly different view of your target organizations, so you will have some information to piece together when you complete your calls. Invariably, two or three organizations will be consistently mentioned as having excellent products and providing outstanding service.
Insiders can give you a great deal of information that you won't find in any written resources. Be aware, however, that every insider, whether employee, former employee, competitor, customer, or supplier, is likely to have some biases about the organization. Be alert to such biases. Everything you hear represents only one viewpoint and needs to be treated as such. This is true of virtually any organization: some will love it, some will hate it. You'll need to determine whether the person you're talking to with has an axe to grind (he may recently have lost out on a promotion), knows enough about the organization (she may really know only about her own department), or is even telling the truth. This is the fun part. You're a detective, evaluating motives and confirming stories.
Interviews are a very important part of employer research. During most interviews you'll learn a lot about the company and the department you would be working in. Make full use of the opportunity to ask questions. Ask about your growth potential, your duties, the interviewer's management style, and the future directions of the company.
