How To Create A Target Employer List For Your Job Search

Liz Ryan

When you’re in a job search, your plan is important. We laid out a job search plan in this story. 

As you begin your job search you’ll want to zero in on a career direction, and brand yourself in a way that supports that direction. If you have an Electrical Engineering degree, for instance, and spent three years doing technology quality testing but now you want to be an Applications Engineer working with customers, you’ll need to brand yourself to show prospective employers that you’ve already done most of the things that Applications Engineers do.


You’ll bring out your Applications-Engineer-type experience in your LinkedIn profile and your Human-Voiced Resume. 

You may not be 100% sure of your career direction right now. That’s okay. You’ll continue to refine your career direction as your job search progresses.
Today we’ll talk about your Target Employer List.
Your Target Employer List is an important part of your Job Search Toolkit. Here are all six elements of your Job Search Toolkit:

• Your Human-Voiced Resume
• Your Pain Letter template (to keep on your computer’s hard drive and use as a starting point for every Pain Letter you write)
• Your Target Employer List
• Your Human-Voiced LinkedIn Profile
• Your network
• Your job search business card — get these at Vistaprint and hand them out in your networking travels.

Your Target Employer List has three functions. For starters, it gives you a roadmap to follow as you begin to reach out to employers with your Human-Voiced Resumes and Pain Letters. You can continue adding new employers to your Target Employer List as your job search progresses, and you can also remove employers from the list as you learn more about each organization and about what you want and need in your next job. So the first function your Target Employer List will fulfill is that it will give you a path to follow as you begin your job search.

The second function of your Target Employer List is that it will allow you to track your job search progress. You can update your Target Employer List each time you send anything (an initial Pain Letter + Human-Voiced Resume packet or a followup email, phone call or LinkedIn invitation) to a manager on your list. That way you’ll be able to track your job search activity.

The third function your Target Employer List will serve for you is that when people ask you “How can I help you in your job search?” you’ll have a good answer for them. You’ll be able to say “Thanks for that offer. That’s very kind of you. Do you happen to know anyone who works at one of these employers?” and show them your Target Employer List.


Here are four ways to construct your Target Employer List:

See the 4 ways and the complete Forbes article