Market mapping in recruitment: process, example and template

Market mapping in recruitment is the structured research of an external market: the employers that hold the experience a client needs, the people in the relevant roles, and what that field means for the hire. It is done before a search to set the brief, or alongside one to prove coverage. The output is a documented picture of the market, not a list of CVs.

This guide works through the whole process on one illustrative brief, from the scoping conversation to the recommendations page. It includes an employer inclusion/exclusion matrix, copyable company and people tables, an annotated summary and a scope checklist. The method holds for any sector; swap in your own brief as you read.

What market mapping means in recruitment

A market map answers a client's question about a labour market they do not employ. Recruiters use it for four kinds of decision:

• Whether to hire externally at all. How deep is the relevant pool, and does it exist at the seniority the client wants?
• Where to look. Which employer segments hold the experience, including adjacent ones the client had not considered?
• What the brief should be. Which requirements are realistic, which ones narrow the field to a handful of people, and which could flex?
• What it will cost. How do pay bands and package structures vary across the field?

In an agency, the work is external. That separates it from the internal nine-box review that shares a name in corporate HR. The terms "market mapping" and "talent mapping" overlap heavily in agency use; talent mapping vs market mapping sets out the distinction. This guide is the practical process.

The worked example: the brief

A fictional UK payments company, called "the client" here, has around 140 engineers and is preparing for a regulated product launch. Its CTO wants a VP Engineering to run delivery across four platform teams. Before agreeing a retained search, the client asks the agency three questions: how many credible people exist in the UK, where they work, and whether the London-only requirement is realistic.

That is a market-mapping brief, not yet a search. Each step below uses it.

Step 1: Agree the role, geography, evidence standard and exclusions

Every weak map fails at the edges. Before you find anyone, agree six things with the client and write them down.

The evidence standard is the boundary most often skipped. Without it, a map mixes verified remits with guesses, and the client cannot tell which is which. Agree that every row carries its source and the date you checked it, and that availability, interest and salary are never inferred from a public profile.

Write the inclusion rule as a sentence someone else could apply. For the example: include UK-operating companies where a single engineering leader is responsible for delivering a regulated or high-availability financial product at 60–250 engineer scale. If two researchers would build different maps from your rule, it is not finished.

The talent mapping brief and scoping template turns these boundaries into a document the client can sign off.

Step 2: Build the employer universe

Start with employers, not people. If you begin with the leaders you already know, you build your network into the map and present it as the market. Starting from an employer universe produces a field you can defend.

Build it in two passes. The direct set is the obvious match: other payments and banking-infrastructure businesses at a similar stage. The adjacent set holds the same experience under a different label, such as engineering leaders in large banks' payments divisions or high-availability consumer platforms. Adjacent segments are often where a map earns its fee, because they surface people the client's own team would not have searched for.

Then decide each segment out loud. A matrix makes the reasoning visible to the client.

Borderline is a legitimate answer. Record it, explain it and resolve it during calibration rather than hiding it inside "include". When real employers illustrate a category in your own work, check their sites or official records and date that evidence; employer facts and candidate judgements should never be confused.

In the worked example, the researcher checks 46 employers: 31 included, 9 borderline and 6 excluded. These fictional counts illustrate a coverage report. They do not establish that 46 employers is sufficient for another brief; explain the segments investigated, discovery methods and unresolved gaps against the agreed inclusion rule.

Step 3: Identify people, with source dates, remit and uncertainty

Now find the people inside each included and borderline employer. For each, keep one consistent row. Consistency matters more than volume: a table where every row has the same fields is readable, while one where every row has different gaps is not.

Record five things beyond name, title and employer:

• Remit. What they actually lead: team size, platforms, products, regions. A title is a label; remit is the evidence.
• Source and checked date. Where the remit came from and when you saw it. A company page, a public profile, a conference talk or a filing.
• Uncertainty. What you could not confirm. "Team size not stated" is more useful than leaving the cell blank.
• Research priority. Approach first, investigate further or outside scope, with a reason.
• Contact status. Not contacted, contacted, replied, declined. Keep this separate from fit.

Do not record a guess about who might move. Tenure, a reorganisation, a funding round or a leadership change are company events; they are not evidence that a named person wants a new role. Availability is established in a conversation, and the map should say so.

This step is the slow middle of the work, and it is where most of the cost sits. TalentMaps is built for it: paste the public LinkedIn URLs you have identified and it enriches each one into the same structured profile shape, with work history, education and location in consistent fields. You still decide who belongs on the map, and every enriched profile deserves a sense-check against the source.

Copyable tables for the worked example

These are the working tables behind the example, with fictional rows. Copy the CSV blocks into a spreadsheet to start your own.

Employer universe (extract)

ref,employer,segment,decision,decision_reason,uk_engineering_presence,source_url,checked_on
E01,Company A,Payments scale-up (Series C),Include,Same product type and scale,London HQ (~180 engineers),,2026-10-02
E04,Company D,Large bank payments technology,Borderline,Scale and governance differ; calibrate,Several UK sites,,2026-10-03
E05,Company E,Pre-Series A fintech,Exclude,Below team-size floor,~15 engineers,,2026-10-03

People (extract)

ref,title,employer_ref,remit_evidenced,source_url,checked_on,uncertainty,research_priority,priority_reason,contact_status
P07,VP Engineering,E01,Four platform teams; card processing,,2026-10-02,Team size not stated,Approach first,Matches scale and regulated delivery,Not contacted
P19,Head of Payments Engineering,E04,Payment rails within a larger group function,,2026-10-03,Remit may sit under wider CTO org,Investigate,Scale mismatch possible,Not contacted

The talent mapping tracker is a PowerPoint version of the people table, laid out for presenting rows to a client. Keep the working copy in a spreadsheet or your recruitment system, where contact history belongs.

Step 4: Separate market coverage from a qualified shortlist

A market map and a shortlist answer different questions, and confusing them is how maps get oversold.

Report coverage honestly. In the worked example: 46 employers checked; 212 people identified in relevant roles; 58 within the agreed remit and scale; 17 marked "approach first". The 17 are not a shortlist. They become one only after contact and assessment, which is the next stage of a search. When you get there, how to present shortlisted candidates covers that meeting, and what is candidate mapping explains the stage in between.

"No one found" at an employer can mean the role does not exist there, or that the person is not visible publicly. Report those employers as unresolved, not as empty.

Step 5: Turn rows into findings

A list of people is a directory. The map's value is the interpretation the client cannot get from a database. Work from the rows to a small number of findings, each with the evidence that supports it.

For compensation, give bands from a stated source, such as your own placement data or a published survey, and label them as estimates. For movement between employers, describe the pattern you observed and the period it covers. If the client asks for a representation view of the market, agree the method first; do not infer protected characteristics of named individuals from photos or names.

Here is how the worked example's rows become findings:

Step 6: The annotated summary

The client reads the summary first and often only the summary. Write it last. This is the worked example's one-page read, with notes on why each line is there.

1. Coverage first. States the universe and the rule before any names, so the number is defensible.
2. The finding the client did not ask for. Location was an assumption in the brief; the map tested it.
3. A decision, not an observation. Each finding ends with what the client should consider changing.
4. Uncertainty in plain sight. Gaps and contact status are stated, so nobody mistakes the map for a shortlist.
5. A next step with an owner. Calibration is the bridge from map to search, and the moment the client commits.

Step 7: Use the tracker and present the report

The deliverable has two layers. The people rows are evidence, and the report around them is the agency's judgement.

Two free templates support this. The market map report template is the full research presentation, with sections for the market, employer universe, people, pay and recommendations. What goes in a market map explains each section and how to run the meeting.

TalentMaps produces the candidate-report part of that deliverable. PDF reports can include the cover, authored brief and rationale, candidate profiles grouped by tier, and closing page. The editable PowerPoint export uses its own slide layout, with summary counts and candidate fit notes; it is not a page-for-page copy of the PDF. Market analysis, the employer matrix and recommendations remain researcher-authored, in the report template or your own format.

A report generated by TalentMaps

Inspect the actual candidate-report PDF or editable PowerPoint. These files were generated on 27 October 2026 by the application's current export functions, using fictional candidate records. The PDF uses the Classic layout. They demonstrate report formatting, rather than live enrichment accuracy or customer results.

The example starts with two prepared profiles. Maya Collins is placed in Tier 1 for the fictional payments brief; Daniel Osei is placed in Tier 2 as a platform-delivery comparison. The fit notes explain the apparent match and the questions still to test. These classifications are illustrative recruiter judgements; neither person is real or has been contacted.

For a real project, identify the public LinkedIn URLs, import and check the profiles, write the brief and fit notes, assign tiers, then review the exported files. Keep source dates and unresolved questions in your working research record. The shortlist meeting guide explains how to present that judgement to the client.

The free shortlist presentation template is a separate PowerPoint download with a manual comparison worksheet and next-steps page. It is edited in PowerPoint; it is not an upload template for TalentMaps.

The scope checklist

Before you send a market map, check it against the brief:

• The inclusion rule is written as a sentence, and the client agreed it
• Each employer has a decision: include, borderline or exclude, with a reason
• Each person row has a remit, a source and a checked date
• Uncertainty is recorded rather than left blank
• Availability, interest and salary are not inferred from public profiles
• Contact status is separate from fit
• Coverage is reported: employers checked, people identified, people in remit, unresolved employers
• Findings each point to evidence in the rows
• The summary states gaps and that the field has not been contacted
• The recommendation names a next step

Applying the method to your sector

Nothing in this process is specific to payments. The boundaries, employer matrix, evidence standard and coverage report work for any market; what changes is the employer segments, the remit that matters and the signals worth recording. The sector guides cover those differences, including fintech, private equity, life sciences, legal, cybersecurity, SaaS, renewable energy, professional services, financial services, healthcare, engineering, construction, the public sector, logistics and defence.

For the end-to-end method without a worked example, see how to do talent mapping. For where mapping sits in the wider agency model, read the complete guide to talent mapping for recruitment agencies. When you have the URLs for your own field, start a map in TalentMaps and let the tooling carry the copying and formatting.