Newsletter: April 2004
Top 10 Tools for developing target lists.
by Jeff Weidner
So you and your crack staff of recruiters have decided to penetrate
the passive candidate market to see if there are any qualified candidates
out there that would rather be working for your company. Now what?
The first step is to identify the list of target companies that
you could potentially pull candidates from. But where do you start?
What resources are out there to help you build a qualified target
company list?
Here is a list of Top 10 resources that HTC uses
to identify potential targets.
Hoover’s Online - Hoover's, Inc., delivers
comprehensive company, industry, and market intelligence that drives
business growth. Our database of 12 million companies, with in-depth
coverage of 40,000 of the world's top business enterprises, is at
the core of our business tools and services that customers find
vital to their business operations. Hoover's editorial staff of
some 80 editors and researchers bring vital business information
and knowledge to their coverage, updating the site daily to bring
our visitors and subscribers the most up-to-date business information
in the industry. (From their web site www.hoovers.com)
CorpTech - CorpTech researches and publishes both
high-quality private company profiles and public company profiles.
This unique source of business directory information on the hi tech
business segment allows you to perform in depth company research
to generate competitive intelligence, business leads, mailing lists,
and unique company profile data points for use in all your company
research activities. (From their web site www.corptech.com)
Candidate Resumes – Review the resumes of
candidates that interviewed but were not hired. Their current or
past employers may provide another target or two to add to the list.
Hiring Managers – Most Hiring Managers can
name at least a few candidates that are from direct competitors.
They’ve worked with them in the past, met them at industry
functions, heard them speak at conferences and read their articles
in magazines. Tap into this resource because referrals are an excellent
way to network your way into a company. Just ask, “Who do
you know?”
The Marketing Department – This is an often
forgotten resource. Not only does the Marketing Dept. keep track
of who the company is trying to market to, but they also track who
else is marketing similar products or services to your customers.
They should have a list of direct and indirect competitors readily
available.
Search Engines – Use the advanced search
area of just about any search engine and type in your company’s
name and the word ”competition OR competitors”. Unless
you work for an obscure company you should at least be able to get
one or two companies from reading the various articles. Then perform
the same search with one of those company’s names.
Industry Sources – Symposiums, Conferences,
Consortiums, Magazines, Trade Shows, Standards Associations, Testing
Laboratories etc. We once were performing a search for a client
that was entering into the PDA market. They wanted to target other
PDA manufacturers but only the obvious top 5 companies came to mind.
We added another 20 companies by doing a search on Google for “PDA
Manufacturers and Conference” a sight came up which was a
web site for a PDA Manufacturers Conference that had taken place
a few months prior and it listed every PDA Manufacturer in the world
and even sorted them alphabetically, by location, by price etc.
Online Retailers – This works great for
companies that are in the consumer goods arena. Do a search on Amazon
for makers of your same product.
Job Boards – Look through the job postings
to see who else has posted similar jobs.
User Groups/News Groups - There are tens of thousands
of news and user groups to cover every possible interest and topic.
They tend to be a little slow in developing a viable list of targets
but as a last resort they can be a valuable resource.
When all else fails, look for “Like/Kind” companies
or indirect competitors to pull candidates out of. These are companies
that are making or selling like/kind products or services. If you
can’t get that Wireless Engineer away from that hot cell phone
manufacturer maybe you could find them at a PDA company that uses
wireless technologies or a pager company. Or maybe you could look
at a completely different industry that uses the same or similar
technology.
There are at least another 1000 resources available to recruiters
but these are the ones we have found to be the most useful. Not
every resource is effective 100% of the time so hopefully you'll
be able to add one or two to your bag of tricks and be able to impress
that hiring manager the next time he asks "Where else can we
find qualified candidates?".
Feel free to share other resources you may have with us at info@htcresearch.com.
Copyright © 2004, HTC Research Corp., Inc All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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