Build a Target Company List for Sourcing

When to use it

The prompt

Help me build a target company list for sourcing a {{Job Title}} at {{Company Name}}. About us: {{stage, size, industry, tech stack, and anything unusual about how we build}} About the role: {{what this person will actually work on}} LOCATION: {{where candidates need to be}} Give me target companies grouped into: - Direct analogues — similar stage, scale and technical problems, where the work would transfer almost exactly. - Step-up sources — places where someone would be ready for more scope than they currently have. - Step-across sources — different industry, same underlying engineering problem. - Companies to approach with care, and why (recent layoffs making outreach land badly, non-competes, an acquisition in progress, or a culture gap that tends to make these hires unhappy). For each group, tell me what to look for on a resume from that background, and one thing about it that tends to mislead recruiters.

Tip

The step-across group is where the leverage is. Everyone is already messaging the direct analogues, which is exactly why those people ignore you.

How to use it

Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or whichever assistant you use, then replace every {{bracketed}} part with your own detail. The more specific and messier your input, the better the output — a model given raw notes has more to work with than one given a tidy summary you wrote first.

More Market Intelligence prompts

Open the full tool for all 87 prompts, the glossary, and the JD decoder.