E. 9 - Job Search Reset: Target Employers
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[00:00:08] Melissa Vining: If you're a high performer looking to grow and make an impact, but feeling stuck, underappreciated, and burned out at work, you're in the right place. I'm Melissa Vining and this is the Job Search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I help high performers leave draining jobs behind, reclaim their careers and land roles and organizations where they can thrive. Tune in for tips, insights, and inspiration for your journey to fulfilling work that fits you.
[00:00:38] This is the Job search for High Performing Misfits podcast, and I'm your host, Melissa Vining. I want to welcome you back to the second episode in my Job Search Reset series where we are talking about doing hard things in your job search. So if you missed the first episode on figuring out what you want, I highly suggest you go back and listen to that first, because that's going to be your foundation for everything else. If you have not taken the time to really figure out what you want, the rest of this tends to fall apart.
[00:01:11] So after you have done that, you can move on to the next step, which is what we're going to focus on today, and that is finding employers that have what you want. So presumably you have your list of things that you want to be doing at work every day, or in other words, your duties, responsibilities, impact that you want to make through your work, and you also have your list of workplace characteristics that are most important to you in your next job. So now you can use all of this to start actually searching for target employers. Again, this is harder than just scrolling through job boards and applying to hundreds of jobs and hoping they're a good fit. It requires doing some research, doing some digging into the companies, even talking to people who work there.
[00:02:02] So in order to start building your list of target employers, you have to start with what you know. And as always, the more specific you can be, the better. So what industry are you looking to work in? Based on the type of work that you want to do, what job titles most likely fit? Based on what you know is important to you, what are some of the employer characteristics or attributes you might be able to identify? So for example, maybe you're specifically looking for companies that support remote or hybrid work. Maybe you're looking for jobs that allow you to start early and finished by 3. Maybe you are specifically looking for small companies or large companies. Whatever it is, define that for yourself and write all of it down.
[00:02:52] If you are stuck on any of these things, this can actually be a good use for AI. So you can give ChatGPT or whatever AI system you use, all the information you wrote down about what you want to do, and ask what kinds of roles get to do those things. Or give it all the information about what's important to you in your next workplace, and ask what kind of industries align with this, or what are some characteristics of the companies that do these things?
[00:03:24] So once you have a pretty good description of your target employer, you have to go start looking for companies that match. So this process involves finding companies and then evaluating those companies to see if they really fit what you're looking for. So there are a lot of ways to do this, but I'm going to highlight just a few of my favorites for now. So the first is that you can search online. This is probably the most obvious one.
[00:03:54] You can use job boards to get ideas for companies that are hiring. So I do have to give a caveat here; when you're doing this, it's not about finding and applying to jobs through those job boards, it's specifically about finding employers. And I'm actually going to talk a little bit more about why this is important later in the episode, but for now, just know that the job boards are kind of meant to get ideas about the companies. I tend to prefer smaller, more niche job boards compared to the giant ones, like Indeed, because the smaller ones tend to be more accurate and also more helpful because they're more specific. So for example, if you're looking for a mission driven job, you could use something like Idealist or Work for Good, or maybe you're looking for a remote job, you can use a remote specific job board.
[00:04:47] There are also ways to do this search online that do not involve job boards. So again, you can ask AI. The more details you give it, the better. So give all the details and ask for company recommendations. I will say it has become better at using live sources from the internet. There are still some AI platforms that are doing this better than others. Perplexity tends to be one that has always been better at doing this. Of course, you always want to double check anytime you use AI because sometimes it will still give you inaccurate or outdated information.
[00:05:25] Another way of searching online is through industry associations. They sometimes have private job boards for their members, and of course those are going to be very specific too, so that can be really helpful. Similar idea, if you're looking for a company that's local to you, you can use your local Chamber of Commerce and look for their member directory to find companies that are in your area.
[00:05:50] Another way of searching online is on LinkedIn. This is actually one of my favorite ways to do this. And before you go over to LinkedIn's job board and start searching, that's actually not what I mean. I mean searching for people on LinkedIn. So, let me explain this. You're going to go to LinkedIn and in the search bar, you're going to type in your target job title. From there, change the filter to do a people search. So you are searching for people who have that job title. You can also add a second filter for location if that's helpful to you. So now you're going to see in the search results, the people who have that job title. Go to their profiles, and take a look at the companies they work for now, and the companies they've worked for in the past. So this is going to start to really expand your knowledge of what's out there.
[00:06:45] So that's number one, search online. Number two, you can get ideas from other people, like real humans. This might be the people in your life, like friends and family. It might be people that you worked with in the past, or it might be people in your professional circles. So by that I mean professional associations or groups or communities on LinkedIn or Reddit or Discord that are specific to the roles or industries that you're targeting. Or even groups or communities that are specific to your identity, so maybe you're a working parent, you're neurodivergent, something else. Um, you can also go back to the people that you found on LinkedIn and actually reach out to them and have conversations about their companies.
[00:07:31] So you do all of this research, you start to build your list. And the second part is that you have to actually evaluate the employers as you go. So this means we're digging deeper than just, these are the different options. We have to see, do they match with what I'm really looking for? So in order to do this, there are a lot of different ways.
[00:07:56] Some of the ones that you want to start with, you want to look at their website, look at their careers page, um, look at their LinkedIn and any other social media. So you're looking for the kinds of things they're posting, the number of people that are connected with their LinkedIn page, who those people are, what is their background? How long have they been at the company?
[00:08:19] You can watch, or listen to, or read interviews with the executives and the senior leaders of that company. This is a really good way to get more information about what is most important to the company. What are they talking about right now? What does it seem that their leadership style is like?
[00:08:37] Read reviews from their clients or customers, if that's applicable. Um, if it's an option, you always want to try to use their services. So if it's something that is available to you in the public space or you know, in some other circle that you're in, use their services, experience what this company is like to be a client or a customer.
[00:09:00] Back to the point I made before, talk to people who work there. This is one of the best ways to get inside information about the company. So while you're doing all of this research, you're looking for clues about what is important to them, and you want to see if that aligns with what is important to you.
[00:09:21] So at the end of this process, you're going to have a list of target employers. And this is going to be so helpful in your job search for many reasons. So first, you've already started to vet these places based on what you know, they seem to align with the kind of work that you want to do and the things that are important to you. Plus, you can now spend your time in ways that are likely to give you the biggest return. Job searching takes time, and especially when you're doing it intentionally. So now that you have a target list, you can focus your time and energy where it really matters.
[00:10:02] Also, and possibly one of the most important parts about this right now, is that one of the best, most effective and underutilized job search tips in 2025 is that you need to apply for a job right away after they post it. I mean the same day. So let me tell you how this relates to having a target employer list. As you know, as I've talked about before on the podcast, most people job search in a reactive way. They spend all their time scrolling through job boards and applying for jobs there.
[00:10:44] My biggest advice to you is now that you have your list of target employers, get off the job boards and go directly to the source. That's the employer's website. Most job boards, especially the big ones, scrape their information from the internet. This means that by the time the job shows up on the job board, it's already old. The job board is behind. Which means that if you are using job boards as your primary source of information, you are also behind. And of course this brings me back to the point I made a few minutes ago, you cannot afford to be behind in this competitive job market. So take your list of target employers, add a link to their careers pages where they are posting their jobs, or maybe bookmark those pages for yourself, and use that as your primary source of information.
[00:11:47] So, as you can see, this is a pretty big project to take on in terms of researching and evaluating and building your list of target employers. And again, it's a hard thing that most people are not willing to do. So go do it, and I'll see you back here for the third episode in the Job Search Reset series where we talk about how to develop your core personal brand so you can stand out from all the competition and really effectively communicate your unique value.
[00:12:19] Melissa Vining: If you love this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe. Leave me a review and share it with a friend so we can help more high performing misfits find work they love. See you next time.
