My boyfriend and I have talked about my job (web developer) allowing me to work almost anywhere, while his job (handbag/accessories designer) pretty much limits him to working in New York and (maybe) Los Angeles. Recently I found out that Amazon.com’s headquartes are located in Seattle, and started wondering what other technology companies might be in that city. After talking about this with a co-worker, I found a great way, through LinkedIn, of getting a list of the top companies within any specific industry located in a specific city.

1. Log into LinkedIn and click on the ‘Companies’ link at the top
2. Leave the ‘Company Name or Keyword’ field blank and select ‘Located in or near:’ from the ‘Location’ drop-down menu.
3. Put in any zip code for the city you want to find companies in, like 98104 for Seattle. There’s a ‘Look Up’ link that lets you search for them (or just Google for it).
4. Check ‘Only company headquarters’ (so you don’t end up getting retail stores if you’re searching in an industry that has them…)
5. Click on the ‘Show more…’ and select an industry from the drop-down menu (like ‘Internet’ if you’re trying to get a listing with a company like Amazon).
6. Press the ‘Search Companies’ button.

Voila! Searching for Internet companies in a Seattle zip code, with only the headquarters, gave me a list with Amazon.com at the top and other major sites like Classmates.com, Disney’s Internet Group, and Drugstore.com. I’m not 100% sure how these sources are sorted, besides the first set of them being companies that have employees that I’m connected to somehow.

On the right you can refine these even further by entering keywords (although that can narrow it down too much… Amazon.com doesn’t show up with “books” as a keyword, but does if I type “bookstore”…), the size of the company, related industries, and only companies that are currently hiring.

This is definitely better than a blind search on Google with city names and words related to your industry, or business directories which don’t let you filter the listings in any meaningful way.