Lets say that you were invited to an office building in Manhattan or Chicago or LA for a business opportunity. Obviously, before you go, you check out the building’s other commercial tenants to see if there are any companies there
which might hold an interest to you also. (I mean, why not? You’re already Stuck paying for that day’s parking. Why not stop by to see what a company may be like after your appointment? I’ve heard that a number of people have
famously been hired this way.)
I’ve noticed that very few office buildings list their business directories on-line though and I was wondering why. It doesn’t seem like it would be a privacy issue; its like free advertising. Is it due to high turn-over?
Is there some website that offers current commercial tenant listings building address by building address that I don’t know of? (I think they’d make a mint if they did.)
Also, is this one of those things that went away after 9-11, so potential terrorists couldn’t tell where Kermitsky & Fozzensen sell insurance?
Have you tried just doing a Google search on the building name or address? You might find the website for the building or its leasing agent. Or pull up the building in Google Maps. I just tried both of these for the Graybar Building in Manhattan and a random address in Stamford, Connecticut.
I think this is something that salesmen did half a century ago – (and back then they were all men).
Yeah–if the the other companies in the building have any kind of online presence, they’ll usually come up with a simple google search of the address. If they don’t, it’s because they don’t want people bothering them, and they’re likely not going to be of any interest to you.
Sure, but they probably put the lists together themselves for their own use. The question I meant to ask was “why would the landlord or management company bother to create and maintain an online list of all of the tenants in a particular building?”
It would be an on-line version of a lobby building directory.
True, but everyone is different and some people who aren’t you might want this information.
Its not a sales tactic; I’m not a salesman. Age and Gender slams aside, If I can get a jump in person on a job opportunity before it lands in the mad scramble of on-line glurg, why is it so hurtful to you (or Anyone else in the world) if I try?
Huh? What I said had nothing to do with you. It was simply an observation about one (previously common) reason a person might want to see a listing of the businesses in one particular building.
But since you mention it, are you expecting this building to house all (or mostly) businesses in your field? Or do you just like its location as a possible workplace?
Its a target of opportunity: I’m there, in a suit with resumes and many places are slow on the data entry of new job needs with job websites. It might be near a train or a bus route that I can use.
Again, its a one shot to go out there for one interview; why not plan to multi-task and see what might be available while I’m out there?
Yes, we understand what you want. The question is “what’s in it for the organization that actually has to do the work of posting and maintaining it?”
Ah, because you feel it would be helpful to YOU.
Here’s a reality check: The landlord doesn’t give a shit about helping you find a job.
What the landlord cares about is keeping the tenants in the building happy so they renew their leases. The landlord does not want some random guy walking into offices and pestering the tenants. That does not make the tenants happy.
IF a commercial landlord chooses to post a directory of the tenants in a building online, it is because there is some reason that it will ultimately benefit the bottom line - at the cost of making it easier for people like you to annoy the people actually paying the rent.
I didn’t address this part. First, how exactly do you think this website would make a mint? Second, there are indeed websites out there that do offer extensive information on commercial buildings, including information about which tenants might be in a particular building. It is astonishingly expensive to get access to these databases. If they could make “a mint” offering this information to the public, why aren’t they doing it?
Advertising? Showing off who potential renters might be renting next to? That other people may use it as well to shop or find the business which they have an appointment with is also a benefit. If that’s just not enough gold in the backpocket, you could have just listed the names of those sites that sell those. That would have been the Civil way a professional would have responded to my very polite inquiry.
As for the rest of the out-of-the-blue hateful invective, well… Reported.
I would say it could be hurtful to you–if this is not just a hypothetical, and if in fact this something that you are actually considering doing, I’d say with the best intention for you that you might want to think twice about this.
Because here’s the thing. Unless you have some reason to believe that this building will have other workplaces of the same type to which you are scheduled to interview, it might seem strange for a person to just show up at their door handing out a resume. If some other business in the building is deliberately not putting their address online–in other words, if they do not make their address public for whatever reason–the first thing they’re going to wonder is why you are showing up in person—especially if they have no job openings there. In fact, they’ll probably ask you as much before they even take the resume out of your hand. And then, what are you going to say? “Well, I happened to be in the building, so what the hell–here I am!”
It’s possible that they might be so puzzled that (depending on the size of the building) they’ll ask around at the other businesses in the building, and it could reflect badly when word gets around to the one you actually did interview with. At the best, it will look like you don’t really care where you work, and most employers aren’t looking for someone like that. At the worst, they’ll suspect that you’re possibly just casing the building for a break-in or something.
I’m curious: What did you find? Or rather, what did you not find that you might get from a hypothetical online directory?
I can see why you might want to do this if this were a building, oh, let’s say around Sunset and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood, with a lot of agencies, and you were a musician or an actor. Or maybe a building on Wall Street, and you were in finance. But then you would be in the midst of not the online “mad scramble,” but the in-person “mad scramble,” which goes on in places like that already.
The OP idea would be most useful to someone who wanted to blow up somebody’s office and find out exactly (from a distance) what else might blow up along with it.
I can see there is some limited benefit in it, but in my experience (remembering always this part of the world is a little different)
a) Building managers that would be responsible for maintaining the list aren’t exactly customer centric
b) The same building managers aren’t very tech savvy to be managing a CMS
OK… 10 different people completely opposed to the idea. I guess I never knew that a sentence like, “Good Morning! By any chance, is your office hiring?” would be so offensive and personally damning.
In my life I have met several people who have done just that, caught the eye of the owner, and ended up not only employed there, but heading up major projects within a year.
(One of them rode up on a bike while in street clothes and asked at an out-door project. The owner hired him on the spot.)
In a world of point-and-click application drones, it seemed a way to break out of the mold. There have been many times in my life when I’ve found myself driving past some building or another not far from where I live
and noticing how they are always busy and thriving. Sometimes I’ll write down a company name & try to find an on-line presence to apply through, but not all companies have great on-line career sites.
Thanks for the advice.
In the America that I live in, there are a Whole Lot more people looking for jobs than looking to damage property or people. We’re in a Bad Economy, not a Bad Video Game.
Your concern may be valid, by my scenario is infinitely more likely.
I’m going to echo what most other people have said and say that the reason this information is not online is because tenants don’t want to be bothered by some random dude, and the landlord cares about keeping the people that make him money happy, not some schmuck off the street.
Second, I doubt you’d be able to even get into the offices. NONE of the businesses in my office building have doors you can just walk into - you need a badge to even open the door. If you try cold-calling one of the employees, we all have instructions to tell you to buzz off.
I’ve interviewed a few places that have a reception area you could get to without the badge/key (although sometimes even that is behind locked doors). In those cases, part of the receptionists job is to politely tell random people (like OP) that show up to leave because they aren’t wanted. And if that doesn’t make them leave, she calls security, who rather impolitely makes them leave.
Besides, if you walked into a random business to drop off your resume and ask for a job, the best outcome would be getting told no. The more likely outcome would be getting placed on a “do not hire” list. The worst outcome would be word getting back to the people you are actually there to interview and losing the job because of it.
Huh? What I said had nothing to do with you. It was simply an observation about one (previously common) reason a person might want to see a listing of the businesses in one particular building.