Any tips or ideas for narrowing down industries?

May 20, 2020

by a searcher from University of Florida - Warrington College of Business Administration in Atlantic Beach, FL, USA

Hey everyone,

At the beginning of the search and working on PPM but really struggling on narrowing down the industries I want to focus on. I’m not sure how narrow or broad I need to set my focus and I’m realizing my interests are all over the place.

For instance, I can see light manufacturing or b2b services or supply chain/logistics. At this point I’m more confident in knowing what I don’t want to do rather than the direction I do want to head.

For experienced searchers, how were you able to narrow your focus a bit at the beginning and did things evolve significantly from your starting point?

Also how did you translate that onto paper in your PPM?

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Reply by a searcher
from California State University, Los Angeles in Beverly Hills, CA, USA

Here is what I did: I took a look at my own personal experience. Throughout my working life, I've experienced retail (restaurant worker from 16 until I graduated), marketing (was a marketing intern for awhile and had many marketing companies as clients), finance (I am in the finance industry), and have made loans to commercial and industrial businesses (wholesale, distribution, steel manufacturers, etc). So, I have a breadth of experiences. I then looked at the economy overall - including the covid economy. What is changing? I'm not into fads, so face masks and hand sanitizer isn't going to stick around long (i.e. distillers). Great money opportunistically for brewers and such, but not long term... But, there will be changes. I coupled that with my belief for growth and focused on all of these things; what I know, what I enjoy, what has prospects for growth, and what is set up for the next economic cycle.

Hope this helps a bit.

Reply by a searcher
from IESE Business School in Colombia

Hi Evan,

I would recommend running industries/subindustries through a simple scorecard to ensure they meet certain SF model requirements. For example growth > 2x GDP, low cyclicality (special emphasis during COVID), exogenous risk (regulation, technology obsolescence, etc). Once those points are covered and you feel comfortable with the potential of 3-4 industries you like, focus on the tailwinds and trends of these industries, hopefully, you come across secular growth themes (urbanization, aging population, etc.) that can be supportive of industry growth in the long term. Finally, I would focus on industries with business models that are asset-light and contracted.

Hope this helps!

DW

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