How to learn about an industry in a week?

Can you really find an industry in a week?

When chatting with people in consulting, investment banking, investment, headhunting and other industries, I repeatedly heard the time of "one week", so I began to wonder: under what circumstances do I need to know an industry within one week? How did you learn about an industry in a week?

It is still impossible to "find out" an industry within a week and become a top expert or executive in this industry. But you can know the overall situation, present situation, past and future possible development trends of an industry, be familiar with the jargon of that industry and master the basic information of this industry.

What's the use?

You can talk freely with people in that industry, you can use your knowledge and experience to see new opportunities from an outsider's point of view, you can impress your customers, you can get a good job and know what your boss will consider when making a decision. ...

So our WeChat account "Change Yourself" invited three guests to tell us how they found out about an industry in a week.

—————————————— How did the people in the first phase of the consulting company find out an industry in a week? ———————————————————————————————.

When recruiting employees, the founder of a consulting company assigned such a task-give me a report of an industry within a week. Many students from famous universities at home and abroad submitted resumes and wrote reports, but he was disappointed to find that none of the candidates met the standards and none of the reports he received had bright spots.

How to find out the situation of an industry in a week? Let him talk to us.

Yimo is the founder of Hengjia Intelligent Consulting Co., Ltd. and the author of Sales Everywhere.

He said:

The matter of "knowing an industry" itself is unlikely to be completed soon. However, if you just want to know the most basic situation, you can ask a few key questions first. These key questions revolve around a fundamental question: how does the chain of this industry work?

1 What is the value of the industry?

What are the links in this industry from the source to the end?

Who will share the price of end products in this industry?

What key factors did each link rely on and what value did it create before it got its due benefits?

5 Who owns the pricing power of the industrial chain?

What is the market concentration of this industry?

Access to information includes:

1 industry report of financial investment institutions;

2. Analysis report of the consulting company;

3 popular posts on industry exchange websites or forums;

4. Training courseware for enterprises in the industry;

5. Participate in industry exhibitions or forums;

6 practitioners communicate privately.

Where 1-4 can be obtained through network search.

————————————— How do the people of the second phase IT consulting company find out an industry in a week? ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————.

There is a calf in the IT field who works in an IT consulting company.

I asked him, "Do you often have to find out an industry in a short time when consulting?"

He said, "Yes."

"How long will it take?"

"A week."

"Ha ha, a week? How many people can beat that industry? "

"90%."

He is our guest today, Bear Festival. I have worked in ThoughtWorks, an IT consulting company for 8 years, and I am also a reconstructed translator. Let's take a look at his experience:

Learn about an industry in five days and three steps.

As a career consultant, getting familiar with an industry in a short time is a job I often have to face, and I am willing to share my experience. According to my experience, it is not difficult for a consultant who has mastered the basic business knowledge to be familiar with an unfamiliar industry within one week. Of course, a week's time will not make a fresh person an industry expert, but for a consultant, working smoothly in this industry is enough.

We must make effective use of these limited five working days. My suggestion is to go in three steps: first, make sure you don't talk nonsense; Secondly, let yourself enter the dialogue of this industry; Third, try to put forward eye-catching ideas.

* Step 1: First of all, don't talk yellow.

To enter a new industry, you must first understand the leading enterprises in this industry-probably the enterprises you need to serve immediately. The most direct way to know a leading enterprise is to look at its financial statements. The financial statements of listed companies are all public, and usually a very useful letter from the chairman to investors is attached. Looking at a financial report, you can learn a lot of basic information: the ownership nature, main business, main customers, income structure, cost structure, staff size, talent structure, strategic direction and main risks of this enterprise ... Even if the enterprise you really want to know is a non-listed enterprise (such as Huawei), it must have many similarities with its main competitors (such as ZTE). So reading the financial report can give you a basic understanding of the main players in this industry, and you won't ask some outrageous questions or suggestions.

How to read financial statements, a common analytical method is DuPont analysis. I have an article about DuPont's analysis of how to interpret the financial statements and operating conditions of a well-known listed company (ZTE). (See this article. After I did this exercise for one year, ZTE's 20 12 interim financial report suffered huge losses, and the continuous decline in profit margin was one of the direct reasons why the company and several major competitors began to lay off employees substantially from 20 12.

Spend a day reading the financial reports of one or two companies, and try to read a comprehensive book about this industry. For example, I recommend risk management and insurance in the insurance industry. The purpose of reading such a book is, first, to have a deeper understanding of the business model and practice of this industry. For example, you should know that there are some fundamental differences between property insurance and life insurance, so their operations will be very different; The second is to master the "slang" in some industries. For example, when you hear "underwriting" and "underwriting", you have to know what they mean. I personally read this book in my spare time, which adds up to about 8 hours.

* Step 2: Enter the industry dialogue.

It is not enough to start a dialogue with cxo in the industry, because people usually don't talk about the most basic things. To enter the dialogue of an industry, you have to understand the current trend of this industry. Someone will recommend chatting with friends in the industry. But as an introvert who is pressed for time, I personally prefer to focus on research materials, supplemented by chatting with friends.

The best source of industry trends is the industry analysis made by management consulting companies such as McKinsey. Personally, I especially recommend the research report published by McKinsey Quarterly and the industry analysis of The Economist (/). From these two websites, find out all the articles related to the industry you are concerned about in the last five years, and spend a day or two reading them all, so you should be able to grasp the pulse of this industry.

Working in the China market, we are worried that the analysis of McKinsey and The Economist is not "aimed at China". My experience is that, on the one hand, some local content can be supplemented appropriately; On the other hand, the development of all walks of life in China is basically three to five years behind the advanced level in the world. That is to say, what happened in developed countries in Europe and America three or five years ago should be what happened in China, and what happened in developed countries in Europe and America one or two years ago should happen in China one or two years later. Compared with "China characteristics", many times simple market rules and time difference are more effective.

At the same time, during this whole week, you should immerse yourself in the context of this industry. The solution is simple: subscribe to a bunch of news RSS directly related to the industry and target enterprise you want to target, temporarily block all other RSS channels, and spend all your free time on the subway, cafes, bedside, toilets ... Look at what has happened in this industry and this enterprise recently. For example, when I was paying attention to the Australian insurance industry, I subscribed to the keyword "Australian insurance" of Google News and the name of my client company. I can know the news before most of the employees of the customer, so there are many topics to talk about.

* Step 3: Give priority to me and make comments.

At the beginning of this series, Peng Ying told a story. The founder of a consulting company asked the candidates to make an industry report within one week, but later he found that none of the reports made by the graduates of these famous schools had bright spots. Whether the story is true or not, in my opinion, the crux of the "no bright spot" lies in the fact that the applicant is a "graduate": although he is studying another industry, the key to the "bright spot" lies not in how well he studies that industry, but in the professional skills of the researchers themselves. The so-called "Kung Fu is beyond poetry" is the truth.

For example. If you look at the analysis of China life insurance industry made by McKinsey last year, first of all, you will find that it follows the two steps mentioned above: detailed data, accurate terminology and grasping the pulse of the industry. However, its highlight lies in pointing out several major pain points of China's life insurance industry, and putting forward corresponding solutions from the perspective of strategy and management. In the final analysis, this is what cxo in the industry expects you to take out as a professional, and it is also the fundamental purpose of quickly understanding an industry: to quickly understand an industry, not to show your learning ability, but to make your professional skills used in this industry.

So the key is to combine your major, skills, knowledge and experience with the situation of this industry and put forward something that others have not mentioned.

So, after the first two classes, you should set aside at least one whole day to answer these three questions for yourself:

1. What are the pain points facing this industry?

2. What is the most urgent pain point for people in the industry?

3. How to combine your professional skills with these pain points?

The answers to the first two questions should be objective. In other words, you can print out McKinsey's life insurance industry analysis, throw away the last "solution" part, and then try to find solutions to the major pain points listed in it in combination with your own professional field. How to promote life insurance sales through IT? What kind of human resources strategy does the life insurance industry need? Even what kind of MBTI personality is more suitable for senior life insurance services? All these are different. The part that puts forward opinions is the proposition composition of professionals who stand in their own professional fields. Whether they can tell the bright spots depends on the intelligence of the target industry quickly, and the most important thing is to see their accomplishments in their own professional fields.

——————————— A headhunter came in the third issue and told us how to find out an industry in a week.

Today we invited a headhunter to talk to us about this topic. Chris introduced himself-wandering in the workplace and hunting in the city. City headhunter.

Listen to why he wants to find an industry in a week:

Before I started writing this article, I had never thought about this problem so quantitatively. Now I recall many headhunting cases. In fact, I found an industry within a week.

Before explaining how to do this, I want to make a statement: each industry contains many dimensions, such as industry history, present situation and future, market capacity, consumption scale, the way and degree of interaction with economy and politics, the survival state of enterprises in the industry, the distribution and dynamics of industry talents, etc. When we need to find out the situation of an industry in a short time, it is based on the actual needs of the current work. Therefore, the following is mainly from the perspective of a headhunter to explain how to find out an industry in a week.

The workflow of headhunting is generally as follows:

Clients put forward recruitment needs-headhunters analyze positions-determine the source of matching talents (industry/enterprise)-make a talent search plan (that is, how to reach the target candidates)-evaluate potential candidates-recommend matching candidates for interviews-and qualified candidates are hired.

Usually, it takes 7- 10 days for headhunters to recommend the first batch of matching candidates to their clients, which requires headhunters who place orders to find out one, two or three industries within one week, tap the talents needed by clients and make a comprehensive evaluation. For today's topic, we only need to discuss the link of "communicating with the target candidate" in headhunting work, and the overall idea and operation of its realization can be briefly described as follows:

1, delimit the corresponding industries, or expand to related industries.

A. customers provide basic industry information, such as competitors;

B. consult friends in related industries;

C. Understand the products/services/business models of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry through the Internet, industry magazines and industry reports.

2. Determine the industry TOP5 or TOP 10 enterprise list, and pay attention to the ranking standards of the list and the ranking changes in recent years.

A. consult friends in the industry;

B. refer to the annual fortune 500; ; You can expand it appropriately to understand the ranking changes in the past 3-5 years;

C. Query the ranking of enterprises (such as sales volume, growth rate, number of retail terminals, etc.). ) pay attention to the strategic adjustment, market layout, new product release, merger and acquisition information of enterprises through the information disclosure of the Internet, industry associations and listed companies. ;

D. Consult the industry/enterprise analysis, case analysis, product analysis, industry forecast and other reports of financial institutions such as PE/VC and securities.

3. Lock the target candidates of corresponding positions in the organizational structure of listed enterprises and get in touch with the target candidates through various channels.

A. Contact/consult friends of industries/enterprises, or friends of friends; (Network resources)

B, search for human resources in the headhunting company's own database;

C. Third-party talent pool resources (such as linkedin and Weibo);

D. Incoming calls (phone calls)

Key points:

A. Everyone contacted communicates in detail, and excavates the data and information of specific positions/employees/businesses/products/services of their own enterprises and competitors to the maximum extent;

B transform and absorb the information in time, and use it for the people who come into contact afterwards, and at the same time verify the accuracy and reliability of these information.

By the second point, we can actually know that 70-80% of an industry (estimated by the author's experience) is even more, and most people may find it difficult to realize the third point. In fact, the situation is not as bad as you think, because you have many friends, and your friends also have many friends, not to mention the unlimited network resources brought by the "six-degree subdivision theory". As long as you want to tap the information brought by your existing network resources, you can increase 10-20% on the basis of the existing 70-80%. Conservatively speaking, you are already half an expert in this industry at this time.

Give an example to illustrate.

I once did a case to find a candidate for South China GM for a top 3 sugar group in the world. When I first came into contact with this position, I was a complete layman in the sugar industry. I only know the concepts of sucrose, white sugar and brown sugar that I come into contact with in my daily life, and the sugar added in various fruit juices, coffee and biscuits, and I know nothing else, let alone dig people up and evaluate whether I am competent or not.

After starting the project, follow the above method. We do the following work according to customer requirements and job qualifications:

1, describing the industry

First of all, I searched for keywords such as "sugar enterprises" and "sugar rankings" on the Internet. According to the search results, domestic sugar companies are almost all local private enterprises and state-owned enterprises, which are divided into southern sugar companies mainly based on sucrose and northern sugar companies mainly based on stevia sugar.

Secondly, from the search results of "Sugar Industry Analysis" and "Sugar Industry Research Report", we know the industrial layout, advantageous provinces, product characteristics, upstream and downstream products of China's sugar industry, as well as upstream planting (sugarcane and stevia planting) and midstream manufacturing (sugar factory, slag treatment, etc.). ) and downstream distribution (food processing enterprises, beverage manufacturers, food additive companies, etc.).

Finally, it will be extended to companies that international groups associated with upstream and downstream industries conduct corresponding business in China, such as international food group, four major international grain suppliers, Nestle, Pepsi, Zheng Da feed and other enterprises.

2, determine the list of enterprises in the industry

A domestic sugar companies: Yangpu Nanhua, Guangxi Agricultural Reclamation, Guitang, East Asia Sugar, Nanning Sugar, Feng Tang Sugar, Mao Ying Sugar, etc.

B. ABCD, the world's four largest grain merchants, China COFCO;

C. According to Fortune 500 and product classification, determine the list of food manufacturing or retail enterprises: Nestle, Pepsi-Cola, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Tai Sen, etc.

3. According to the list of enterprises, select the target candidates for the corresponding positions, and get the enterprise/industry information to the maximum extent, which enriches the contents of the first two steps.

Because this article is mainly to find out the industry, I won't repeat the third step. Through the information collection, collation and analysis in the first 1 and second steps, and the information extraction and mutual verification in the third step (also called the utilization of human resources), I found out the situation of an industry and even related industries in less than a week, and completed the client's entrustment on this basis.

The above is a way for headhunters to share.

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