The US is not one talent market. It is a dozen, and they behave differently. We map who could do the role in each metro, how competitors have structured their teams, what compensation it takes to move someone, and how much unvested equity stands between a strong candidate and a start date.
We are a research consultancy, not a staffing agency. Every project is a fixed fee for the research — never commission, never a percentage of compensation. We hold no off-limits list. Every record we produce is handed over and stays yours.
Talent mapping is the structured research process of identifying and profiling the people who could fill a defined set of roles in a defined market, before a vacancy exists. A talent map records who those people are, which organizations employ them, their function, seniority, location and tenure, how the teams around them are structured, and — where scoped — what the market pays. It exists so that hiring and workforce decisions are made against researched evidence rather than against whoever happens to apply.
A talent map is a research asset, not a candidate list. It is commissioned to answer a business question — can we staff this plan, in which metros, at what cost, against which competitors — and it keeps its value long after the first hire. Because Audentia clients own the data outright, one US map is routinely used for a year or more of hiring across multiple roles.
The research combines talent identification, market analysis, competitor analysis and talent profiling — recording each individual consistently enough that people from a 300-person startup and a 90,000-person enterprise can actually be compared. In the US that last part is not a formality. It is the difference between a usable map and a list of inflated titles.
A comprehensive US talent map layers each profile with current employer, current role normalized against real scope, function, seniority, metro location, tenure, career history, reporting line and organizational position, evidenced skills and industry experience — and, where scoped, compensation benchmarks and workforce composition. It never contains anything obtained from confidential sources.
Sourcing begins with an open requisition and looks for people who will apply now. Talent mapping begins with a business question and describes the entire relevant population, available or not.
The practical difference is coverage and shelf life. Sourcing stops when a pipeline is full. Mapping does not stop until the defined market is covered, which means it captures the people who were not looking, the ones who passed this quarter, and the competitor structures that explain why the market behaves the way it does. One expires with the requisition; the other keeps earning.
Talent mapping is used at the point where a plan is still reversible — before headcount is approved, before a metro is selected, before a leadership team is designed, before an acquisition is priced. It answers the question underneath all of them: does the talent this plan depends on actually exist, in reach, at a cost we can carry?
For the full methodology and comparison frameworks in depth, see our main talent mapping service page. This page covers the US market specifically. Hiring in Britain? See talent mapping services in the UK.
Talent mapping is one of ten research services at Audentia Research, and the one most often used as the foundation for the others. These are the mapping and intelligence services most frequently commissioned by US clients.
| Service | The question it answers | Who commissions it |
|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive talent mapping | Who could do this, in which metros? | VP Talent Acquisition, Heads of Talent |
| Talent scans | Is there enough talent in this metro to justify a full map? | Workforce planning, TA leadership |
| Talent market mapping | How deep, accessible and expensive is this US market? | Strategy, workforce planning |
| Competitor talent mapping | How are our US competitors built, and where is their depth? | CHRO, strategy teams |
| Executive talent mapping | Who could credibly do this senior role, and what would it cost to move them? | CEO, board, PE and VC investors |
| Leadership talent mapping | Who leads these functions across US metros, and who is next? | CHRO, succession and OD leads |
| Talent research | Verified data on a defined US population, to our specification | In-house TA, search firms, RPOs |
| Talent intelligence | What is happening in our market, and what should we do? | Leadership teams |
| Talent pipeline development | Who is engaged and ready before the role opens? | TA directors, Heads of Talent |
Ongoing, refreshable market insight rather than a point-in-time study. Audentia delivers this as a service in its own right.
Explore Talent Intelligence →Engaging the mapped population ahead of live need — and, in US markets, timing that engagement against equity vesting events.
Explore Talent Pipelining →Discuss your US talent mapping projectA 30-minute conversation is usually enough to scope it.
Talk to Audentia About Talent MappingTalent market mapping is the analysis of an entire talent market — its size, structure, geographic distribution, cost and accessibility — rather than of individual candidates alone. It answers whether a hiring plan is realistic in a given market before that plan is committed to.
The single most consequential decision in a US mapping project is which metros are in scope — and the honest answer is almost never "national."
Compensation, availability, competitive intensity and mobility vary enough between US metros that a national average is close to useless as a planning input. The same senior engineering role can carry a materially different compensation expectation in the Bay Area than in Raleigh–Durham, sit in a market with ten aggressive competing employers rather than two, and take twice as long to fill. A plan built on a national number will be wrong in every metro — too high in some, too low in others, and never right anywhere.
We scope US projects metro by metro, and we report metro by metro. Where a client wants a single number, we give it — with the range, and the reason the range exists.
US title inflation is the most common defect in US talent maps produced by firms without US research depth.
Vice President at a 200-person venture-backed company frequently means a first-line manager with four reports. At a Fortune 100 it can mean a business unit leader with several hundred. Director spans an equally wide range. Head of has no consistent meaning at all. In financial services, Vice President is a graded rank held by thousands of people who manage nobody.
A map that treats these as equivalent produces a population that cannot be compared and a shortlist that is not appointable. Every US profile we produce is normalized against evidenced scope — team size, reporting line, budget or business responsibility where it is publicly evidenced — so that seniority means the same thing across every organization in the map.
Sourcing begins with an open requisition and looks for people who will apply now. Market mapping begins with a business question and describes the whole relevant population, available or not. Sourcing stops when the pipeline is full; mapping does not stop until the defined market is covered.
Frequently commissioned by strategy and leadership teams rather than by HR — because the output is competitive intelligence that happens to be about people.
Competitor talent mapping is structured research into how rival organizations are staffed — their leadership, team structures, headcount distribution, talent concentrations and hiring activity — built entirely from publicly available information and open primary research.
The US disclosure environment gives competitor research a set of tools that do not exist in most markets.
Where the boundary sits. This work uses publicly available information and primary research conducted openly — published sources, regulatory filings, company disclosures, professional networks, and direct conversations in which our researchers identify themselves and explain the nature of the research.
We do not obtain confidential internal documents, HR records, internal compensation files or client data. We do not misrepresent who we are or who we work for. We do not ask people to disclose information they are contractually bound to protect. Personal data is processed in line with applicable US state privacy law, including the CCPA/CPRA where relevant, and research subjects are told what the research is for.
A competitor talent map is an assembled, verified picture of what is observable. That is the entire product — and in the US, what is observable is a great deal more than most organizations realize.
Executive talent mapping is the research and profiling of senior leadership populations — C-suite, board, EVP, SVP and VP — to establish who could credibly perform a specific senior role, how they are placed today, and what it would actually take to move them.
The populations are small enough that every profile matters. A market of nineteen credible candidates cannot be handled statistically. A client will make a decision about a named individual on the strength of one profile.
US mobility runs on equity, not notice. This is the single largest difference from other markets and the one most often missed. At-will employment and two-week notice mean a US executive can start fast — the legal brake barely exists. The real brake is unvested equity.
An executive two months from a large RSU cliff is effectively unavailable at any reasonable price for those two months. One who has just vested a substantial tranche and has not received a refresh grant is unusually available. Option exercise windows — often 90 days after departure — create hard financial deadlines that shape when someone can leave. For public companies, much of this is publicly disclosed in proxy statements; for private companies it has to be researched and estimated.
A US executive map that reports interest without assessing equity position is not decision-grade. The buy-out cost is frequently the largest single number in the hiring decision, and it is knowable in advance.
Non-compete enforceability varies by state, and has been the subject of significant regulatory and legal change in recent years. It materially affects who is genuinely reachable in some states and sectors, and barely matters in others. This is a legal question and clients should take their own counsel — but a map that ignores it will overstate availability in the states where it bites.
Visa status affects a meaningful part of some populations. In several US technical markets a significant share of senior specialists hold employment-based visas, which constrains how easily and quickly they can change employers. It is not something to research intrusively or record about individuals — but at the population level it is a real factor in how available a market actually is, and an honest availability assessment acknowledges it.
Where a US leadership change must not become public, executive mapping gives a board the complete external picture without a single approach being made and without a search firm signaling to the market that a role exists. If the decision is then taken to move, the map becomes the search. If it is not, nothing has leaked.
Where a decision has already been made to appoint, see our Executive Search service — delivered on the same project-fee basis, with market mapping as the foundation of every search.
Leadership talent mapping identifies and profiles the leadership population across a defined market, including emerging leaders below the current top team, to support succession planning, leadership hiring and organizational design.
Talent intelligence is the gathering, verification and analysis of data about a talent market — the people, competitors, skills, rewards and locations that shape it — turned into insight a leadership team can act on. Where a talent map is a point-in-time study, talent intelligence is designed to stay current.
Compensation data without population data tells you what the market pays but not whether anyone is available. Population data without equity context tells you who exists but not what it would cost to move them. In US markets particularly, the combination is where the value sits — because the four numbers that decide a US hiring plan (population size, compensation level, equity buy-out, competitive intensity) are only meaningful together.
Audentia delivers talent intelligence as a service in its own right — see Talent Intelligence for the full offering, including refresh cadence, sample deliverables and case studies.
A talent intelligence consultancy conducts bespoke research into talent markets and converts it into decision support for senior leadership — rather than supplying candidates for a fee. The output is analysis and recommendation, and the engagement is scoped and priced as a research project.
Audentia's model removes one further conflict that applies to agencies and search firms: we are paid for research and never for a placement, so we have no financial reason to conclude that a market can support a plan when it cannot.
Talent research services provide verified, structured data on defined talent populations, produced to a client's specification by trained researchers. US executive search firms, in-house talent teams and RPOs commission talent research as embedded capacity; corporate clients commission it as the input to a hiring or planning decision.
Our full research philosophy, engagement model and quality principles are set out on Our Approach.
Talent pipelining is the process of engaging and maintaining relationships with identified candidates before a role becomes live, so qualified people are already known and interested when hiring begins.
A US talent map contains far more people than any hiring plan needs immediately. Pipelining takes the segment that matters, makes contact, establishes interest and context, and keeps the relationship current. The map tells you who to talk to; the pipeline is the talking.
Equity-timed hiring. This is the US-specific case and it is powerful. If a map shows that four strong candidates hit a vesting cliff in the same quarter, a pipeline built three months ahead of that quarter converts at a rate reactive sourcing cannot approach. Timing an approach to an equity event is not manipulation — it is simply knowing when someone is actually able to consider a move.
US talent data ages faster than most markets — tenure is shorter, moves are quicker, titles change. A pipeline that is not refreshed becomes a list of former facts. Audentia refreshes on an agreed cadence, and because you own the data, you can maintain it in-house instead.
See Talent Pipelining for the standalone service, including engagement approach and refresh cadence.
Talent acquisition intelligence is market evidence applied directly to hiring execution — supply, competition, cost, location and difficulty for the specific roles being recruited.
Applied to a live US hiring plan, it establishes:
The recurring failure in US hiring plans is leveling. A role scoped as a Director internally may be a VP-level scope in the market being hired from — which means the compensation band is wrong, the candidate pool is wrong, and the requisition will sit open for two quarters while everyone blames the recruiter. Mapping catches that before the requisition opens.
For US labor market context, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the authoritative public data on employment, occupational distribution and labor turnover by metro area. Our research supplies the population-level detail public data cannot.
Recruitment market intelligence is analysis of the conditions a hiring effort is operating in — talent demand, talent supply, competitor hiring, workforce trends, skills, locations and market conditions — used to shape recruitment strategy rather than to fill a single role.
How this differs from traditional recruitment. Traditional recruitment responds to an open requisition. Recruitment market intelligence operates before that point and asks whether the market can support the plan at all — and when the answer is no, that conclusion is delivered rather than buried.
Workforce intelligence is analysis of how workforces — your own and your competitors' — are composed, structured, distributed and skilled, used to inform workforce planning, organizational design and expansion decisions. Its unit of analysis is the workforce, not the requisition.
Eleven steps. The first four decide the value of everything after them.
We start with the decision, not the requisition. Sizing a market, planning a leadership hire, selecting a metro, testing a headcount plan, benchmarking competitors.
The boundary is agreed explicitly and documented before research begins: functions, seniority, sectors, metros, and which adjacent pools are in or out.
Built from the market definition, then tested. The organizations added during research are frequently the most valuable.
What qualifies someone for inclusion — scope, experience markers, evidenced capability — expressed precisely enough that two researchers make the same call.
Systematic, organization-by-organization coverage by researchers who specialize in that function and US market.
Individuals identified against the agreed criteria, with completeness against scope as the objective.
Every profile checked; titles normalized against evidenced scope; career history, structural position and capability recorded consistently. Anything unconfirmed flagged as unconfirmed.
Density by metro and employer, movement patterns, structural comparison, and availability assessment including equity position where it can be evidenced.
Organized into the agreed segmentation — ready-now, developmental, watch-list, unlikely to move — so the output is analyzable rather than a flat list.
Where the depth is, where the plan is exposed, which organizations to target, who is genuinely reachable, and what the map says that the original assumption did not.
A briefing with the decision-makers, plus the complete dataset and analysis handed over permanently.
Book a 30-minute discovery callWe will tell you honestly whether mapping is the right tool for your decision.
Talk to Audentia About Talent MappingThe table below shows the data points in a standard Audentia talent map. All of it is researched from publicly available sources and open primary research.
| Information | What it shows | How it can be used |
|---|---|---|
| Name | A specific, relevant professional in the defined market | Turns an abstract market into people you can actually approach |
| Current employer | Where they work today | Reveals which US organizations hold the capability |
| Current role | Position, normalized against evidenced scope | Makes a VP at a startup and a VP at an enterprise genuinely comparable |
| Function | The discipline they work in | Enables function-level supply analysis |
| Seniority | Real level, not stated title | Establishes whether the population is appointable at your leveling |
| Location | Metro, plus whether the role is site-based, hybrid or remote | Underpins metro strategy and relocation assumptions |
| Tenure | Time in role and with the employer | The strongest single indicator of likely mobility |
| Career history | Previous organizations and progression | Reveals the routes people take into these roles |
| Skills | Technical and functional capability evidenced in public record | Tests whether the skill set exists at the volume assumed |
| Industry experience | Sectors worked in | Identifies transferable pools beyond the obvious competitor set |
| Reporting line | Who they report to and who reports to them | Shows what they actually run, not what their title implies |
| Organizational position | Where they sit in the structure around them | Distinguishes a functional leader from a senior individual contributor |
| Compensation information (where scoped) | Researched compensation context for the level and metro, corroborated against public range disclosures where available | Tests whether your band is competitive before you make an offer |
| Talent pool category | Ready-now, developmental, watch-list, unlikely to move | Turns the map into a prioritized action list |
Contact details for mapped individuals can be gathered as a separate step through our Number Gathering service, handled in line with applicable US state privacy law. Where a project also scopes workforce composition or diversity benchmarking of the mapped population, see Diversity Hiring.
| Talent mapping | Recruitment | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Understand a market | Fill an open requisition |
| Timing | Before the requisition exists | After it opens |
| Research | Systematic coverage of the whole defined market | Enough candidates to build a pipeline |
| Candidate coverage | Everyone relevant across every target metro | Those available and responsive now |
| Strategic value | Informs headcount, leveling, metro selection and compensation strategy | Delivers a hire |
| Outputs | Structured map, competitor structures, analysis, recommendations | An accepted offer |
| Shelf life | Long — the asset keeps working | Ends with the requisition |
| Commercial model | Fixed project fee | Typically a percentage of first-year compensation |
| Typical use cases | Metro selection, workforce planning, succession, benchmarking, pipeline building | Filling live, well-defined roles |
They are complementary. Mapping tells you whether the plan is deliverable and who is in the market; recruitment executes against it. For vetted shortlists without agency placement fees, see Talent Sourcing.
| Executive talent mapping | Executive search | |
|---|---|---|
| Market research | The entire credible field | The field relevant to filling this seat |
| Candidate identification | Everyone who could do it | Those worth approaching for this mandate |
| Candidate engagement | Research contact only; no live role represented | Direct approach and representation of the opportunity |
| Assessment | Capability signals from evidence | Formal assessment, interviewing, referencing |
| Hiring | No appointment is made | The appointment is the objective |
| Relationship | Research project with defined scope | A retained mandate |
| Deliverables | Map, structural analysis, availability and equity assessment, recommendations | A slate, a process, and a hire |
| Commercial model | Fixed project fee | Retainer or percentage of compensation |
| Use it when | You need the field before committing, or the change must stay confidential | You have decided to hire and need the appointment made |
Audentia offers both, which is why the recommendation about which you need comes without a commercial motive attached. See Executive Search.
The terms are used loosely across the industry, which creates real confusion in procurement.
Talent mapping identifies the people in a market. Market mapping analyzes the market itself. A talent map produces a named, profiled population. A market map produces a picture of size, structure, cost and accessibility. Most substantial projects need both, and the market view usually has to come first.
| Term | Unit of analysis | Core question | Primary output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talent mapping | Individual people | Who exactly could do this, and in which metro? | Named, profiled and segmented population |
| Talent market mapping | A talent market | How deep, accessible and expensive is this market? | Market sizing, structure, density and cost analysis |
| Recruitment market mapping | A hiring market | What conditions are we recruiting into? | Supply, demand, competitor hiring and difficulty assessment |
| Market intelligence | A commercial market | What is happening in this market and why? | Trend and dynamics analysis, of which talent is one component |
| Competitor intelligence | Rival organizations | How are our competitors built and what are they doing? | Structural, capability and activity analysis of named competitors |
A practical warning. If a provider offers "market mapping" and delivers a list of names, or "talent mapping" and delivers a market summary with no people in it, you are getting one and paying for the other. Agree the deliverable in writing before the project starts.
For organizational design and structural benchmarking against US peers.
For succession planning, leadership benchmarking, and testing whether a people strategy is deliverable in the metros it depends on.
For workforce planning evidence and compensation benchmarking grounded in researched data rather than survey medians.
The largest single group. To plan hiring rather than react to it, defend leveling and compensation decisions with evidence, and build pipelines for roles they know are coming.
As embedded research capacity for live mandates, and as foundation research beneath a search.
For research capability at volume and in specialist US markets their own teams do not cover.
In diligence, to assess whether a target's management team is as strong as the CIM implies and whether the US market can supply the leadership the value-creation plan requires. Post-close, to map replacements quickly.
Supporting portfolio companies hiring their first VP Sales, VP Engineering or CFO, where one wrong hire is a material event.
To validate deliverability before budget is committed, and to identify which parts of the plan carry the most talent risk.
For competitor structural intelligence useful well beyond HR.
The segment where mapping changes the most decisions, because there is no internal knowledge of the market and every assumption needs testing before money is spent.
For confidential external benchmarking of the executive team, and succession assurance without signaling anything to the market.
The pattern is consistent: mapping is worth commissioning when a decision is about to be made that would be expensive to reverse.
Most hiring decisions are made against the small, self-selecting group who applied. A map replaces that with the entire relevant US population, including the people who would never have applied.
Titles normalized against real scope, and compensation benchmarks corroborated against researched data and public range disclosures — which is what stops a requisition sitting open for two quarters at the wrong band.
Not on real estate cost and an incentive package. The metro with the best incentives is frequently not the metro with the talent.
Because you own the data permanently, the second, third and fourth hire from the same market cost a fraction of the first. Our published case studies include a client that replaced contingency search with research-led mapping and reported £390,650 saved against search-firm fees across one year of hiring.
See our case studies →Knowing when a population is actually able to move is a genuine advantage that only mapping provides.
Seeing the complete credible field — and the real cost of moving each person — before a search begins.
Structural and hiring intelligence, drawn from filings and open research, valuable to strategy teams as well as HR.
Hiring stops being a response to requisitions and becomes the execution of a plan.
The US market is larger, more fragmented and more expensive to get wrong than almost any other — which is exactly why it rewards mapping.
The defining feature of the US talent market is that it has no center. The UK has London; the US has ten to twelve metros that each dominate different sectors, with different costs, different competitive intensity and different mobility. Any US mapping project starts by deciding which of them are in scope, and that decision drives everything downstream.
Compensation, availability and competitive intensity vary enough between these metros that the same role is effectively a different hire in each. A senior engineering leader in the Bay Area sits in a market with a dozen aggressive competing employers and equity expectations set by the largest technology companies in the world. The same role in Raleigh–Durham sits in a market with a fraction of that competitive pressure and a materially different compensation structure.
Neither is better. But a plan built on a national average will be wrong in both, and a map that reports a national average is not doing its job.
A meaningful share of US senior professionals now works remotely for an employer headquartered elsewhere. That has two consequences for mapping. It widens the accessible population for a role willing to hire remotely, sometimes dramatically. And it means employer headquarters location is no longer a reliable proxy for where an individual actually lives — so mapping by company address systematically misplaces people. We map by actual location and work model.
US leadership markets are more open than most: shorter tenure, at-will employment, two-week notice, and a cultural norm of external senior hiring in many sectors. The constraint is not the exit; it is the equity.
Unvested RSUs, option exercise windows and refresh grant cycles determine when a US executive can realistically move and what it costs to move them. For public companies much of the structure is disclosed in proxy statements. For private and venture-backed companies it must be researched and estimated — and it is frequently the largest single number in the hiring decision.
SEC filings, WARN Act notices and state pay transparency disclosures give US competitor research a public evidence base that most markets do not have. Proxy statements disclose executive compensation in detail. WARN notices provide advance public warning of workforce reductions, a leading indicator of talent availability. Salary range disclosure laws in a growing number of states have created a large public dataset of real compensation ranges by role and metro.
For international businesses entering the US, the questions are which metro, what the first hires should be, how to level them, and whether the compensation plan survives contact with the market. Those are mapping questions and they are cheapest to answer before the entity is formed and the lease signed. Getting the first two US hires wrong is one of the most expensive mistakes in international expansion, and it is almost always a market-knowledge failure rather than a judgment failure.
For US businesses expanding to a new metro, mapping compares candidate markets on supply, cost and competitive intensity — which regularly produces a different answer from the one incentive packages suggest.
For US labor market context, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes authoritative data on employment, occupational distribution and labor turnover by metro area. Our research provides the population-level detail public data cannot: named individuals, competitor structures and validated compensation for your specific market.
Audentia Research has an office in New York and delivers US mapping projects across all major metros, with out-of-hours coverage built into the operating model. We do not maintain offices in other US cities; every other metro discussed here is a talent market we research, not a location we occupy. Read more about us.
Our researchers specialize by function and geography across the sectors on our Sectors page. How mapping applies in each US context:
Cloud, AI, cybersecurity, SaaS and semiconductors, distributed across the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, Austin and a growing second tier. The sector where title inflation is most severe and normalization most necessary.
Banking, insurance, asset management and fintech. New York-centered at senior level with major operations in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Boston and Salt Lake City. Graded VP titles make normalization essential.
Pharma, biotech and medical devices, concentrated in Boston/Cambridge, the Research Triangle, San Diego and New Jersey, each with distinct cost and competitive profiles.
Providers, payers and health-tech, with regionally structured systems whose leadership markets are strongly local.
FMCG, retail, e-commerce and hospitality, with headquarters populations concentrated in specific metros — Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Bentonville, Chicago, New York — that are frequently missed by coastal-only mapping.
Advanced manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and chemicals, with site-anchored leadership across the Midwest, the Southeast and Southern California.
Renewables, oil and gas, power and utilities, concentrated in Houston and Texas with a growing renewables leadership population across the Midwest and Mountain West.
Consulting, legal and advisory, with a graded partnership structure requiring normalization before comparison.
PE, VC and portfolio companies, concentrated in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and increasingly Miami and Dallas.
Operators, infrastructure and connectivity, with network and engineering leadership distributed across major hubs.
Broadcast, publishing, gaming and streaming, centered on Los Angeles and New York with significant gaming populations in Seattle, Austin and Southern California.
Government, education and nonprofits, including the cleared and government-adjacent populations concentrated in the DC metro.
A UK enterprise software company with proven domestic traction plans a US launch. The board needs to know whether it can hire a US commercial leadership team — a VP Sales, a VP Customer Success and eventually a Country Manager — which metro gives the best access, and whether the compensation plan is realistic. The internal assumption is San Francisco. The alternative under discussion is relocating two UK leaders.
US-based commercial leadership in B2B SaaS businesses between roughly $20M and $200M ARR, with experience of scaling a European software business into the US market. Four metros compared: New York, Boston, Austin and the Bay Area. Around 45 target organizations.
VP Sales and CRO populations; VP Customer Success populations; Country Manager and General Manager populations. Leveling normalized against evidenced scope — team size, quota responsibility and reporting line — rather than stated title. Explicitly excluded: enterprise software businesses above $500M ARR, on the basis that the operating context does not transfer down.
Direct competitors, adjacent enterprise software businesses selling to the same buyer, and — the group that produced the most useful population — European software companies that had already established US operations, whose commercial leaders had done exactly this before.
The named population in each segment, profiled by employer, normalized role, function, seniority, metro, work model, tenure, career history, reporting line and evidenced capability. Each individual assessed for realistic mobility, and for the senior population an equity position assessment: approximate time to next vesting event, evidence of a recent refresh grant, and — for those at public companies — disclosed compensation structure from proxy filings.
Talent density by metro and employer; how comparable companies structure US commercial leadership, including whether the Country Manager role exists at all at this stage; compensation benchmarks by metro and level including equity norms, corroborated against public salary range disclosures where available; movement patterns; and a realistic hiring sequence.
A structured map of the named population with full profiles; a four-metro comparison on supply, cost and competitive intensity; competitor structure analysis; a compensation benchmark by metro and level; an equity-timing view of the priority segment; and a written recommendation with a prioritized approach list. Delivered as a working dataset plus a leadership briefing, handed over in full.
The map showed the segment with genuine European-parent experience was thin in the Bay Area and unexpectedly deep in Boston and New York; that Bay Area compensation for the profile ran well above the business plan, driven mainly by equity expectations; and that most comparable companies at this stage did not hire a Country Manager first — they hired a VP Sales and added the GM layer twelve to eighteen months later. The equity analysis also identified four priority candidates reaching vesting events within two quarters. The company changed the plan: New York as the first market, a VP Sales hire first, the Country Manager role deferred, and the approach sequence timed against the equity analysis. The map became the pipeline for all three roles.
Deliverables are agreed before work begins and scoped to the project. Depending on scope, a US engagement may include:
Everything is yours. Every record, contact, benchmark and insight is handed over in full and stays with your business. Nothing is retained in a proprietary database you must pay to access again, and you can make as many hires from the map as you like at no additional cost.
Every project is billed by scope as a fixed fee — never commission, never a percentage of compensation. We have no financial reason to recommend a hire, steer you toward a candidate, or conclude that a market can support a plan when it cannot.
Search firms cannot approach candidates they have placed elsewhere or research organizations they are contracted to serve. We have no placements to protect, so the map covers the US market rather than the part of it we are permitted to look at.
Every record belongs to you, permanently. Nothing is locked in a tool we control. Hire from the map indefinitely, hand it to another provider, or maintain it yourself.
Open primary research, systematic secondary research across SEC filings, WARN notices, public compensation disclosures and corporate sources, triangulation of every material finding, and explicit flagging of anything unconfirmed.
Researchers specialize by discipline and market rather than working as generalists — which is what makes structural and compensation findings reliable at senior level. ISO 9001:2015 certified research process.
An office in New York, with offices in London, Toronto, Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai. Researching since 2012, across 70+ markets, with out-of-hours coverage that progresses US projects across time zones rather than only during one working day.
Evidence from our own work. Our published case studies include a client that reported £390,650 saved against search-firm fees in a year after replacing contingency search with research-led mapping, and a global AI engineering mapping project covering 4,200 candidates across six hubs.
The global service page — full methodology, comparison frameworks and deliverables across all markets.
View service →UK market structure, regional talent clusters and the notice-period and deferred-compensation constraints that shape availability.
View UK page →Ongoing, refreshable market insight — competitors, skills, compensation benchmarks, locations and diversity.
View service →Pre-engaged candidates ready before the need is urgent, timed against equity events where it matters.
View service →Senior and specialist hires handled with discretion — with market mapping as the foundation of every search.
View service →Vetted shortlists without agency placement fees, for roles that are live now.
View service →Real projects and real outcomes across mapping, search, pipelining and intelligence.
See the work →How we work: discovery, bespoke proposal, research and delivery, and full handover.
Read more →The industries we research, from technology and financial services to life sciences and energy.
Browse sectors →Ten research services. One research-first firm, billed by project and never commission.
View all →Articles, white papers and reports from our global research desk.
Read insights →A talent acquisition and intelligence consultancy, researching since 2012 across 70+ markets.
About us →A thirty-minute conversation is usually enough to establish whether talent mapping is the right tool for the decision in front of you, and what the right scope would be. If it is not, we will tell you.