Top 10 Tools for developing target lists.

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?".


Thanks,

Jeff Weidner
925 313 9005 X 200
HTC Research Corp
Top 10 resources to build target company lists
LinkedIn Jeff Weidner



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