How to Identify Your Targeted Companies’ Challenges

Posted by Kenrick Chatman at 24th January, 2010

Due to current economic conditions, both consumer and business spending is down. Employers have been looking for ways to lower cost to help compensate for a loss in revenue. Thus to standout in today’s job market, you must create value and solve problems. You must demonstrate the ability to do so by generating a return on your potential employer’s investment in you that either meets or exceeds expectations. Of course, potential employers will assess this ability by learning about your past experiences and current knowledge about their challenges and opportunities. Likewise, this article will discuss how to quickly uncover your targeted companies’ current pain points or issues.

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Company’s 10-K and 10-Q Filings

For your publically traded companies of interest, you should first view its latest 10-Qs and 10-K. 10-Qs and 10-Ks are the companies’ quarterly and annual reports. The 10-K will be the main document you use to quickly locate the challenges a company is currently facing. You will identify this information by predominantly viewing Item 1 and Item 7 of the 10-K. Item 1 will provide a business overview of a company’s vital customers, risk factors, competitive landscape, government regulations, and other information. Item 7 contains the company’s management discussion and analysis (MD&A) and will provide more information about the company’s risks, challenges, opportunities, potential actions, and so on. The 10-Q provides similar, less detailed information on a quarterly basis.

To acquire a company’s 10-K and 10Qs, visit the investor relations section of its website and locate its annual reports and press releases. You could also locate this information by following the instructions below.

Visit Yahoo! Finance, place your mouse on the Investing Tab, and select Market Overview
Type the first few letters of a company’s name in the Get Quotes field and select the appropriate company
For the box on the left hand side of your screen, scroll down to the Company section and click on the SEC Filings link
Click on the Full Filing at Edgar Online links for the latest 10-Qs and 10-K

You probably noticed under the company section (in addition to the SEC Filings link) there are links that provide a company profile, a list of competitors, and latest industry news. Use this information to learn how the industry and competitive landscape are impacting your targeted companies’ challenges, opportunities, and actions.

Industry and Analyst Reports

I recommend you check with your alumni and professional associations and local library to determine if you have free online access to sources similar to these: Morningstar, Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage, IBISWorld, and Factiva.

Morningstar provides analyst reports for publically traded companies. These reports will discuss what analysts believe are the current challenges and opportunities for the companies they are following. This is golden information that you can acquire within one to two minutes after reading the bear and bull summaries for each of your public, targeted companies.

Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage provides a company overview, market profile, strategy, fact sheet (with contact information and executives’ names), stock prices, press releases, financial information, and so on. You can also acquire a snapshot or summary of industry information for each of your included targeted companies. From this industry data you can identify problems and risk factors.

IBISWorld provides detailed industry information including risks, challenges, and opportunities. The sources I discussed above do not provide industry reports in detail. If you are seeking to enter a new industry, you may not fully understand the industry information you collected. Likewise, this resource will help you thoroughly learn about the industry and be better equipped to participate in intelligent conversations with subject matter experts including senior executives.

IBISWorld offers industry reports for a company, its suppliers, its suppliers’ suppliers, its customers, its customers’ customers, and so on. For instance, let’s assume that one of your companies of interest is a specialty chemicals company. The company purchases chemicals from several suppliers and converts them into specialty chemicals for its customers including electronic and food companies. Since you are interested in working for the company’s electronics division; you can read industry reports for the company’s electronic suppliers and customers to identify challenges and opportunities.

Factiva is a resource that allows you to search by a company’s name and related keywords to pull up relevant articles. Likewise, you can scan these articles to further identify and understand the issues your targeted companies are currently facing.

For private potential employers, you can identify their challenges and opportunities by:

extrapolating industry-wide issues and opportunities from their top public competitors
searching for information online via the search engines, Factiva, and company websites
networking with former and current employees

Former and Current Employee Networking

Reach out to former and current employees and request informational interviews. After establishing rapport start to ask questions about the challenges and opportunities both the company and department (or division) of interest are facing. You may have to prompt them by asking a question similar to this: “How is the company dealing with this current issue or challenge?” Of course some individuals will not provide you with this information while others will.

For the individuals who comply, you can also ask a question similar to this: “If you were the CEO of the company, what potential solutions and initiatives would you pursue to address and capitalize on these challenges and opportunities, respectively?” You can also run your potential solutions by these individuals to receive their feedback.

In conclusion, you now know how to identify the main issues or challenges for each of your targeted employers. This information will allow you to speak intelligently with hiring managers and differentiate yourself from the competition during interviews.

You should listen to Harrison Monarth’s “Executive Presence.” Go to www.blogtalkradio.com/thecareercatalyst to download the previous shows, register for a free BlogTalkRadio account, mark these shows as one of your favorites, create reminders for the future episodes, and participate live every Tuesday night.