Map a Talent Market

Make the hiring market legible before spending heavily on sourcing. Representative people are evidence about the market, not a shortlist or an assessment of their suitability or interest.

1. Define the decision

Confirm the role, hiring goal, current hypothesis, geography, working pattern, compensation constraints, timing, and the decision the map should support. Reuse the accepted job description, internal role profile, scorecard, prior searches, ATS patterns, and team examples when available.

Separate fixed constraints from search hypotheses. Flag combinations that may sharply limit supply, but do not claim infeasibility without evidence.

2. Propose scope and evidence

Before broad research, confirm:

• title and seniority hypotheses;
• employer, sector, function, and adjacent-background hypotheses;
• geographies and working arrangements;
• public, connected, and internal sources;
• approximate breadth, depth, and cost;
• deliverable fields and destination; and
• the first review point.

Start with a bounded sample when terminology or constraints are uncertain. Never begin a broad or expensive market scan solely because another workflow detected weak pipeline coverage.

3. Map the market

Research title variants, target and adjacent employers, source channels, career paths, geography, compensation evidence where available, representative profiles, and supply risks. Build a taxonomy that explains the segments and relationships rather than collecting names indiscriminately.

For representative profiles, record only relevant professional evidence and source links. Do not imply that a person is qualified, available, eligible, interested, contactable, or appropriate to approach. Avoid protected or irrelevant personal characteristics.

Treat estimates carefully. Do not claim an exact market size unless the sources and method support it. Distinguish observed counts, partial-source counts, directional estimates, and unknowns. Explain coverage gaps and source bias.

4. Deliver the talent-market map

Include:

• the decision and accepted constraints;
• a title and seniority taxonomy;
• target-employer and adjacent-background segments;
• source-channel and geography coverage;
• compensation evidence and limitations when relevant;
• representative profiles labeled as examples, not candidates;
• supply risks, uncertainty, and contradictory evidence; and
• controlled search levers with their likely tradeoffs.

Do not automatically turn the map into a shortlist, outreach campaign, or ATS change.

5. Continue from an accepted definition

When the user accepts the market definition, use Indexbrain's candidate-sourcing workflow to calibrate and build a shortlist. Confirm the definition, scope, sources, scale, fields, and review point for that transition. Candidate outreach remains a later, separately approved state.

Offer to save the accepted taxonomy, sources, constraints, fields, and review point as a custom skill when the team will reuse the market definition. A Routine is appropriate only after the mapping method is stable and a useful refresh cadence exists.