Market intelligence, bought on its own
Know the market before you commit to hiring in it
Most hiring decisions are made on a partial view - a few CVs, one competitor everyone watches, and a salary number someone remembers. Research replaces that with the actual picture.
What research is
The mapping, without the mandate attached
Every search we run produces a map of the market. Research is that same work, commissioned on its own, for the decisions you have to make before you know whether you are hiring at all.
It answers questions a job advert cannot. How many people genuinely operate at this level within reach of your office. What they are actually paid rather than what the salary surveys claim. How your competitors have structured the function. Whether the person you are about to promote internally would stand up against the external field.
You keep the output whether or not you go on to hire. If the research tells you the role as written does not exist in the market, that is a useful answer and a cheap one - considerably cheaper than finding out nine months into a failed search.
Where research fits
Research is what you buy when the question is still open
Commission research when
- You are deciding whether to create a role, not who should fill it
- You are entering a new market or geography and need to know what talent exists there
- A restructure is coming and you need evidence for what the shape should be
- You are benchmarking an internal candidate or an existing team against the outside
- You will need the hire in six months and want the pipeline warm before then
- The board or an investor has asked a question about capability that you cannot currently answer
- The exercise has to stay confidential - no advert, no signal to the market
Use something else when
- You already know the role and you know you are hiring - go straight to search, the mapping is included
- The seat is empty and the problem is this quarter, not next year - that is interim
- You are lifting in a group rather than assessing a market - see team moves
- You want a general view on a market - ask us, that is a conversation rather than a project
The output
What actually lands on your desk
The universe
Every organisation where a relevant person could plausibly sit, segmented by size, sector and structure - with the reasoning for what we included and what we ruled out. This is the part clients most often expected to be a list and find is an argument.
Named individuals at level
Who holds the equivalent role at each organisation, how long they have been there, and where they came from. Tenure and trajectory tell you more about who is movable than any availability signal.
Competitor org structures
How the function is built at the companies that matter to you - reporting lines, team size, where the role sits relative to the executive. Often the single most useful page when the question is what shape your own function should be.
Evidenced compensation
Real ranges for the level and location, with the basis for each figure stated. Not a salary survey average, and not a number we would rather you believed.
The shape of the available market
How deep the pool actually is, where it clusters geographically, and what the demographic profile of it looks like. If your hiring aims are not achievable from the market as it stands, this is where that becomes visible.
A written read
What the data means for your plan, in plain terms - including the parts that argue against what you were intending to do. A map with no interpretation is just a spreadsheet.
How it runs
A defined project with a defined end
Scope
We agree the question the research has to answer, the boundaries of the market, and what a useful answer looks like. Written down before we start.
Build
The mapping work itself. [CONFIRM: typical duration, and whether individuals are approached during research or the work is desk-based and named-only - this needs deciding before publication.]
Present
We walk you and your stakeholders through the findings rather than emailing a document. The discussion is usually where the decision actually gets made.
What happens next
Research often turns into a search - it does not have to
Plenty of clients commission research, read it, and decide not to hire. That is a legitimate outcome and we would rather you reached it before the search than during it. [CONFIRM: whether the research fee is creditable against a subsequent search fee - if it is, that belongs here.]
How search worksNext step
Tell us the question you cannot answer
The best research briefs start as a question someone senior asked and nobody could answer properly. If you have one of those, that is the conversation.
Commission a piece of research