Defining your market

This may sound counterintuitive at first:

The more sharper focus you have on your target market for job search, the more successful you will be. In fact, the more narrower your search, the more response you get from the market. However, after a certain point, narrower focus leads to diminishing results.

Your target market

Your target market for job search could be an industry segment, Fortune top 50, coffee shops in the 94104 zip code. It does not matter how you define your target market but the point is that you define it. And maybe you will go through a couple of iterations to come up with a final definition.

Researching your market

This market definition maybe a collection of certain types of companies that aligns extremely well to your experience and skills.

Your next step is to go through an exercise to find out:
1) How are these companies doing financially, marketplace-wise etc
2) What are the challenges or opportunities in front of these companies? Do they have severe customer service issues? Do they have a product that is not being accepted by the market? Are they entering into a completely new market segment? Are they spending more than their peers on operations and IT?
3) See if there’s a fit for any of the things that you have experience with. Those areas would be a good bet to explore opportunities.

The next step is to take your message to the right people….if the above exercise seems easy to do, its not. I remember going through this exercise myself and it took me about 4 days to come up with a first cut of the market definition.

Good luck with the exercise!