This was from March, 2006 and was one of the discussions over on ERE.

“Visualize this thing you want.” ~ Robert Collier

I had a call from a young lady in Germany who’d just been informed that her new position would entail doing all the sourcing for various consultants in her company. Her first task was to locate yield engineers out of mostly semiconductor companies in Germany. She asked me how to do this.

“Challenging, but not impossible,” I told her.

“The first thing,” I told her, “is to look at the big picture. It's kind of like a puzzle, it comes out of the box whole, you look at it in its entirety, then you break it into its smaller and individual parts and then begin to fit the pieces together - soon the big picture begins to re-emerge and before you know it, you have the entire thing before you!”

"How do I do that?" she queried.

“Assemble a list of your target companies. Organize them into one document, add all the information you can about them – address, phone, size, officers. Add the locations in Germany you need to source people from. Add as much information as you can about the German locations – how many people are there? Are there multiple buildings? Is it strictly R&D or sales or are all functions combined at this location? What does the campus look like? How is their telephone directory structured? Do they have multiple prefixes inside the org or just one, the one related to the main number? Look for commonalities - look keenly at the structures. Are most of them headquartered in Germany?” I asked.

“No” she answered.

“Your job just got a whole lot easier,” I told her. “It’s likely that many of the locations you’ll be sourcing from in Germany will be satellite offices – find out if they have R&D functions at any of them, because this is where you’re most likely to find yield engineers.”

“Oh?” she said.

“Next, think in terms of statistics. Look at each office individually and then consider the statistics. If there are 100 people at a Research & Development location, it’s likely 1/3 – ½ will be engineers. It’s likely the majority of them will be male (unless it’s different in Europe than in the U.S. - is it? I haven’t found it to be so). It’s also likely 20% or so will be administrative, and the other 25% or so will be a combination of other activities, some in engineering, some in management/support, a few in other functions. It’s much easier to take satellite offices apart than main headquarters.”

“Okay, I’m doing that – I’m looking at the big picture, but HOW, now, do I identify them?” she puzzled.

Ahhh…the flummox of the thing.

“Anyway you can,” I answered.

“Huh?” she gasped.

“Well, for one, you can go to the Internet, google with the company name and the first part of their telephone number, and see if some names don’t come up; people inside that location you can call tomorrow and ASK for information or you can visit one of the increasing-in-popularity-by-the-day with the those-in-the-know networking sites (linkedin, spoke, ryze, jigsaw, others – I think OpenBC is popular in Europe) and enter the company name and location you’re looking for people in, and get some names to call on the morrow and ASK for information of or...remember when I told you, “How is their telephone directory structured? Do they have multiple prefixes inside the org or just one, the one related to the main number?”

“Yes,” she offered.

Well, tonight, when everyone’s gone home, get on the phone and see what you can decipher out of their telephone directory.”

“What?”

“Think about it. The telephone directory (usually) offers up everyone (or most everyone) inside that location. I think of it as the “Key to the Kingdom”. Call in and see if you can locate names inside the office that you can call tomorrow and network with. Of course, the more time you spend cruising their telephone directory the more names you’re going to get…believe it or not, a person’s voice speaks volumes about themselves.”

“Oh! I get it,” she exclaimed. “I never thought of that!”

“Okay, you have your marching orders, call me in the morning and let’s see how you’re doing! Now, get busy - you have work to do!”

“Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” ~ Author Unknown
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