Why You Must Develop a Target Market of Employers for Your Job Search

As a job seeker, you are probably tempted to cast a wide net and apply for as many diverse positions as possible. But you’ll be wasting your time if you do. You will be much better off if you can identify and narrow your target market.

The idea of pinpointing and then refining your target market of employers is a scary prospect for most job seekers. A bigger universe intuitively seems more likely to result in employer interest. “If I send out my resume to as many employers as I can,” the mentality goes, “surely some of them will be interested in me.” But the opposite is true: The more you funnel the universe of employers into a laser-focused, precise, narrow segment of those who would love to hire you, the more successful you’ll be.

To understand the importance of target marketing in your job search, let’s first define a target market:

“A specific group of consumers at which a company aims its products and services,” says Entrepreneur.com.

Adapted for a job seeker, that would be: “A specific group of employers at which a job- seeker aims his or her talents and services.”

Here’s what a target market is not (even though some marketers of products and services mistakenly define their target markets this way): “Anyone interested in my products or services.”

Click here to learn how the marketing process works for those marketers who define their target market as "anyone interested in my products or services" and reasons to use target marketing in your job search.