Transcript

REBECCA

There are a number of strategies that you can use to find out about a sector or about an organisation. And obviously websites are the first place that everybody goes. But I would suggest that that is a relatively shallow piece of research. And the vast majority of people now will check a website or websites and be able to regurgitate the same amount of information from having done that.

What really shines out are those people who can go a little bit further and a little bit deeper into the sector. Certainly, one of the easiest things to do is to follow different organisations and different businesses who are prominent within that sector on social media. Follow them on Twitter, follow them on LinkedIn, join in any LinkedIn groups that you can that are appropriate to that sector, and get involved in the conversations. Understand what professionals in that sector are talking about. Read the articles that they’re sharing.

Those are the people that are in the sector that you’re aspiring to. And you will get a much deeper and much more relevant and recent view of the sector by getting involved in those social-media forums

CHARLIE

You can research a sector in many different ways. Start by doing desktop research. You can get an awful lot of information just by doing a few searches.

Have a look and read through industry-related articles and magazines. One of my favourite things to do is go down to the British Library, for example, and take out a book that tells me a bit more information about that sector.

If you want to broaden your knowledge of a sector that you’re already working in – so, you’re a career developer – then you really have to volunteer to go to as many different events that will help expand your knowledge of that sector. So there’s many different conferences or forums you could go to that are not just about what your business does or the business that you’re working in does, but what the wider sector does. There’s often professional associations you can go to to get experience of what’s going on – the sector-wide issues that are currently hot topics and challenges for that particular sector.