TARGET TRACKING

Now that you’ve thought about your strengths, the natural next step is identifying organisations you would like to share them with. Rushing straight at organisations with your CV sends out mixed messages and often leads to early setbacks (see Chapter 3). However, this is not an excuse for sitting back and doing nothing. There is some important underpinning work to be done before your job hunting begins in earnest. Some of this is desk research, some involves conversations, but one of the best ways of using your time in the early part of the process is finding out more about organisations. Some will be stepping stones or simply good market models; others will eventually be targets for your one-person marketing campaign.

What kind of organisations and people? That depends very much on your agenda. You might be looking for a similar job in the same sector, or something different. Clearly the more variables you adjust, the harder the change becomes, so trying to change role and organisation and sector all at the same time takes some doing, and is more likely to lead to rejection letters and lack of progress.

CAREER CHANGE VARIATIONS

Same sector, same role

This is the easiest transition, but isn’t always straightforward. In a declining sector, for example, competition for jobs can increase dramatically. Even staying in familiar territory still requires research – which organisations might jump at the chance to use your skills and knowledge? These will often be direct competitors of the organisation you have just left. Sometimes a well-pitched letter to a decision maker will be all you will need to get an interview.

Same sector, new role

This is also a relatively straightforward move, as what you are effectively doing is using job change to achieve an upwards or sideways move in your sector. Make it clear why you want a change of role, particularly if you want a lateral move. If you want more responsibility, your CV should show what you have done and how ready you are to take on a more senior role.

Same role, new sector

In some occupations (e.g. management accountancy or HR) it’s relatively easy to move from one sector to another, since procedures and systems are often similar. In other words experience is what really counts – you can speak the code. The disadvantage is that employers and external recruiters may want to place you in exactly the same kind of role that you just left, but you may want something slightly different.

Investigate a wide range of organisations in your new sector of choice – this provides you with useful background information and helps you decode ‘insider’ language. This is vital for communicating transferable skills. The average candidate simply names these skills in the vain belief that a list of skills has some transfer value. Stronger candidates know that they have to describe these skills in the language the employer is used to hearing, and explain why their past experience is relevant, valid and useful. Making connections like this shows employers that you are serious about making the sector change, not just vaguely thinking about it.

New sector, new role

This is the biggest leap. On the positive side, we live in a society where people make this kind of change all the time. It’s a leap because you are asking an employer to trust that you are making a sound decision, and that you’re a credible candidate. It’s therefore vital to communicate strength of purpose, show you’ve done your homework thoroughly, give hard evidence of your potential, and show very clearly how your skills and achievement match the employer’s needs.

TARGET SPOTTING

How do you identify useful organisations and learn more about the sectors they operate in? To answer that, you need to increase your awareness of what’s out there. Most candidates have very poor maps of the world of work. For many people career exploration is like navigating using a SatNav that hasn’t been updated for 10 years – there are large blanks which should display road links.

You can start to fill in those blanks in two ways – desk research and live enquiry. Live enquiry begins to emerge as soon as we look at Level 1 conversations, so we can focus here on desk research. Past generations had to rely on business directories, but you can find a great deal of information at your fingertips when you boot up your computer. How you do this depends of course on the geographical area you want to cover. Most people have some limitations in terms of their preferred city or region. If you don’t, you have a broader canvas (although do be aware of the limiting message that may be sent by the postal address on the top of your CV).

If you are looking in one part of the country, you can start with local newspapers and jobsites that cover that geographical area. National jobsites can of course be interrogated using town and county names. Some websites such as Jobsite.co.uk or Gumtree.com are set up to list jobs on a geographical basis. Use large jobsites just to trawl for the names of organisations. (At this point you may be protesting that this book generally discourages over-reliance on jobsites. This is true in relation to job applications, but jobsites are often a very useful way of spotting organisations who have needs and budgets.)

Many university careers services have websites covering employment opportunities in their locality, and you can trace nearby organisations through local employer directories and Chambers of Commerce. Finally, business libraries have access to good commercial databases of employers including OneSource, Kompass or Mint which can give you lists of organisations by size, sector, location and a range of other factors.

Previous generations had to rely heavily on advertised positions to give clues about work availability. Don’t lose track of that channel – job ads, in print or online, reveal active organisations. The jobs advertised may not be what you’re after, but at least you know who is hiring. Your task is to find out what drives that hiring need. There will be a variety of reasons why an employer might be a potential target for you:

1. The organisation regularly takes on new staff because of growth or staff turnover.
2. It has business needs or problems that will need solving soon, probably by creating new jobs.
3. It is a small organisation that is just about to expand.
4. The organisation or sector will be a very positive add-on to your CV.
5. There is a very clear overlap between what the organisation does and what you offer.
6. You admire the organisation’s products, services or market position, or it inspires you.

Any of the above factors might be a reason to proceed further with your investigation. This preliminary research is critical. You start to understand the kinds of problems employers are trying to solve.

Desk research, supplemented with some well-placed conversations, helps you decode organisations further and understand the kind of people they are looking for. You don’t start your job hunt looking for jobs, but for partner organisations. Good investigation gets under the skin of what it’s like to work for a business, so it will ideally include conversations with past or present workers, providing essential inside knowledge.

When you have spotted organisations, find out more about them. Look at their websites to find out what sector they are in and what kinds of jobs they offer. Jane Downes advises: ‘Select your top 10 organisations of interest and do some detective work around what they seek. Reviewing past job specifications is a great place to start here.’ Look up key staff and find out something about their background. Review case studies the organisation offers about career development, or any news you can find about appointments. Look at the people who have been hired – what overlap can you see between their backgrounds and your own?

LANGUAGE AND BENCHMARKS

Give particular attention to the language organisations use to describe what they do and how they describe job functions. Some organisations, for example, put a heavy emphasis on technical language, others on the language of goals, values, customer experience, or social responsibility. Most describe work outcomes in ways that are unfamiliar to other sectors.

Don’t just read job advertisements or descriptions. Scrutinise company reports and brochures. Look at press releases to find out the things that organisations are most proud of. Look particularly at the language that is used to describe success and lack of success. This might, for example, be clear where an organisation talks about standards that it works to. If there are technical terms used, Google them, and if they are still not clear, make a note to ask about them in future conversations.

KEEP A NOTE OF CONNECTING EVIDENCE

As you begin your investigation, start a notebook or computer-based record system to keep a note of organisations you have spotted, web links, facts, details and names of interesting people. Record your results using the Organisational Research Record Sheet (see Chapter 2).

While you are researching, keep updating your notebook with connecting evidence – in other words, pieces of information which can move you forward. This might be a connection to another organisation or another sector. It might be the name of someone you will eventually want to approach. It might be background information about an organisation’s track record that will help you form future conversations. You will also pick up terms that need checking, and cross-references to other career paths. Keep a note of everything that looks as if it might help with future investigation, particularly if you have spotted questions that can only be answered by conversations with real people.

FOLLOW YOUR ENTHUSIASM

Research can be hard work and can hit set-backs, particularly where you need help from people who are sometimes too busy to return your call. Expect flat days. If you want to keep your spirits up while researching, focus on organisations and sectors that feel exciting. If you have some kind of energy driving your enquiry, you are always more likely to go the extra mile and overcome fatigue or knock-backs. If you are researching things simply because they look sensible, you are giving yourself plenty of excuses to stop looking.

HOW DO I USE THIS INFORMATION?

You might be wondering what the point is of having lists of organisations that don’t currently have any vacancies. The point is that this information has value on several levels. The first is that you start to have a sense of what is within reach – real organisations with real needs rather than just an abstract idea about things that are ‘out there’. You get ideas about who you need to talk to. You will start to collect useful information about the kind of evidence you will need further down the line when you are applying for jobs.

Even more usefully, research helps you to start to make choices about where you want to be, and where you can pitch your message. Try to spend more time and energy ruling things in rather than ruling things out. It’s all too easy just to give an idea for career change the once-over and come to a quick conclusion that it won’t work. That’s not research, that’s just a reaction. It could be a good gut reaction, but you still need to check things out properly. You will find yourself easily discouraged from taking things further by people who don’t actually give you advice on a new sector, but simply offer activity-blocking statements like ‘it’s terribly competitive’ or ‘if you haven’t got a degree you won’t be taken seriously’. This is often a partial picture.

Research before job search provides you with better maps and helps you make better choices. The twofold aim of all career-focused investigation is:

1. finding out for yourself, and
2. finding out enough to allow you to move forward.

Finding out for yourself isn’t just for those people who can’t afford a research assistant. Firstly, if you paid someone to do the research for you, you’d only get half the results. This is because you are looking carefully to find out what happens under the bonnet, to get a real sense of whether career pathways might be right for you. This is as much about feelings as it is about facts. Secondly, finding out for yourself helps make you visible in a crowded market, as we will discover in the chapters to come. Being remembered as an enthusiastic enquirer is a great door opener.

Finding out enough to allow you to move forward reminds you that research is linked not to storing and cataloguing information, but to positive activity. The more your enquiries lead to real conversations, the more they assist. It’s about finding out for yourself, which helps ensure you are remembered. Don’t start your job search looking for vacancies – dig out the right employer before the job comes up.

Research is as much about how an organisation feels as it is about the facts. Career coach Ruth Winden stresses the importance of understanding culture:

What has to be in place for you to do your best work? How does your preferred way of doing things fit with the culture of your prospective employer? Often people find out too late that they are in the right job but in the wrong type of organisation, because of a mismatch of ethos and working styles. Go beyond the image the company portrays on its website: talk to current staff and previous employees (who are often more prepared to talk openly); follow discussions and company communications on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter; search on Google and consult sites such as glassdoor.com.

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN I HAVE DONE ENOUGH RESEARCH?

Research is a tool to help you move forward, not an end in itself, so it’s important not to get bogged down in this stage and vital that you don’t keep researching for ever. If you dig deep and ask around, normally you get some fairly big clues early on about choices that might work for you. The next stage is to draw up an action plan which will supplement your desk research with real conversations. We’ll get there soon when we look at Level 1 conversations, but before then you will need to do some serious work on your CV.