What is Recruitment Market Mapping?

Market Mapping is a vital process for businesses seeking to understand and interpret the spread of talent across their markets. This makes it one of the most fundamental processes we carry out here at Edward Drummond, as a key part of the Executive Search process and also a standalone service in its own right. Market Mapping is the analysis of a market, especially competitors, and the employment status of key people who work in it. This helps create an idea of the level of skill and talent competitors have which can help ensure your business is better prepared for recruitment and attracting the best candidates.

Market Mapping helps identify the skill level, and consequent expectation of candidates, for specific roles, as well as illustrating the geographical spread of talent and where to find valuable candidates. It is particularly useful for businesses entering new markets which wanting to understand the location of potential recruits and the level of executives and technical specialists they need. This process allows businesses to have a ‘rolling’ understanding of potential recruits allowing changes in strategy to be implement ideas much more efficiently. Evaluating and defining the competitive landscape ahead of time, means your business is better prepared to take advantage of market changes.

Here at Edward Drummond, we focus on helping clients understand macro and micro market landscapes through detailed analysis of competitor organisations. This helps benchmark how candidates and executives measure up against those in competing organisations and creates practical insights into the actions of other organisations.

Examples of Market Mapping

Below are some real-life case studies in which we have been able to provide value to organisations through market mapping.

• Identifying the ‘next wave’ of senior managers and executives in a highly technical and competitive industry. This enabled us to be well positioned to attract and engage the best talent at senior level within this industry.
• Analysing the market profile of a group of Partners to help identify key competitors and areas of strength/weakness to be leveraged or improved. This helped them understand what their next steps needed to be to remain competitive.
• Undertaking ‘retrospective due diligence’ on a senior hire which did not deliver the results that were hoped for. This helped identify and understand the root causes for this hire not being seen as a ‘success’ from an external perspective and helping the client decide what to do next.
• Undertaking an internal Partnership Promotion Analysis, to help understand which senior associates had already developed external market traction.

As above, the specific details of market mapping assignments can be varied, but they all provide valuable data and insight which helps businesses to progress.

Proactive Market Mapping

Market Mapping can be used to underpin an approach to recruitment which is proactive, rather than reactive. Bad hires often stem from an organisation desperate to find someone to fill a gap, settling for the quickest available option. This is not the way to develop a sustainable business.

Market Mapping, can help build up insights, networks and ideas to ensure that, when an organisation needs to recruit they are already ‘ahead of the curve’; able to direct their energy into the right people and the right areas of the market. Already understanding the factors which make a good hire for a particular role, and knowing where the corresponding individuals currently sit creates a clear advantage when things are moving quickly – ensuring you always have your finger on the ‘top-talent’ pulse.

Benefits of Market Mapping

• Clarify the likely/possible requirements of your business, and who the most suited candidates are in the market for those positions.
• Create candidate profiles for your organisation based on the actions of competitors in the market.
• Research the company structures of growing businesses and the people in them, to understand their strategies and how they are driving growth
• Understand the incentives used to attract top talent.
• Set realistic and achievable standards and benchmarks based on the market.
• Identify all the potential hires for a specific role
• Refine your view of who your competitors for talent are and how this landscape is likely to change.

To get started with market mapping talk to one of our consultants. At Edward Drummond, we are focused on providing results for our clients which tangibly contribute to their growth and development.