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A talent map is a named, verified population: every person in a defined market who could credibly do a specific job, with where they sit, what they own, roughly what they cost and how reachable they are. It is the difference between opening a search and knowing in advance whether the search is winnable.
Individuals, not headcount estimates. Current employer, actual scope of responsibility, reporting line, tenure and career path to date.
Titles inflate. A vice president at one company runs three people and at another runs three hundred. We record what each person demonstrably owns rather than what their title implies.
Ranges seen within this specific population, with the sample size stated, rather than a national benchmark averaged across companies unlike yours.
Tenure, recent promotion, equity likely to be unvested, and any signal about whether this person is realistically approachable in the next year.
Before a search. To find out whether the brief is achievable. A map that returns eleven credible people of whom two are movable tells you to change the specification now rather than discover it in month four.
For succession. To know who exists outside the company for a role currently filled. Boards that only look internally are choosing from a shortlist of one without knowing it. See board and non-executive search for the governance side of the same question.
Before entering a market. To establish whether the leadership you need can be hired locally, relocated, or neither. This frequently reshapes an entry plan. See India market entry.
It is accurate on the day it is delivered and decays from there. People are promoted, companies restructure, equity vests. A map more than a year old should be treated as a starting point for refreshing rather than a current picture, and anyone presenting one as live is selling you history.
It also tells you who could do the job, not who wants it. Interest is only established by approach, and approaching is a different engagement with different confidentiality implications. A map is deliberately silent about whether anyone on it would take your call, because finding that out would mean making it.
Verification and scope. Anyone can filter profiles by title. The work is establishing what each person actually owns, since titles are inconsistent between companies, and confirming it against more than the profile itself. A map is a research output with sources behind each entry, not an export.
No. Mapping is desk and primary research conducted without approaching the individuals and without naming you. If you later want to know whether someone is interested, that is a search or an approach, and it is a separate decision with different implications.
Yes. It is your document. Some clients run their own approaches from it, some use it to decide whether to open a search at all, and some use it to sense check an internal succession slate. There is no requirement to convert it into a search with us.
The figures are observed at the time of research. In fast-moving functions they move within a year, particularly where equity forms a large share. We state the sample and the period so you can judge how much weight to put on it rather than treating a range as a fact with no expiry.
Scope is agreed at the start, by function, seniority, geography and company type. The narrower the definition, the more verification we can do per person. A map spanning too broad a population becomes a directory, which is easy to produce and not very useful.
That is a legitimate and fairly common outcome. If the population is eight people and six are unmovable, the useful response is to change the brief, the package or the structure. Finding that out from research costs considerably less than finding it out from a failed search.
Tell us about the mandate or challenge you are facing and we will show you what a tailor-made, partner-led engagement really looks like.