How to build a talent map before your next senior hire

Most founders start a senior search by posting a role and waiting. The people they actually want don't see the post, because they aren't looking. A talent map fixes that. It's a simple picture of where the people you'd like to hire work today, built before you send a single message.

Here's how to build a talent map for one senior role in about a week, with nothing fancier than a spreadsheet.

What a talent map is

A talent map answers three questions. Which companies have people who've done this job before? Who in those companies is doing it now, or is one step below? And how do those teams tend to be set up, so you know what the role looks like elsewhere?

It isn't a list of applicants. Most people on it will never hear from you. It's a view of the market, and it makes every later step faster: outreach, interviews and pay.

Start with the companies, not the people

Before you search for a single name, write down twenty to forty companies where someone good for this role might work now. Start with direct competitors. Then add companies that solve a similar problem in a different market: if you're hiring a head of risk for a lending app, look at banks, insurers and other credit businesses too.

Rank the list roughly. Which companies are known for strong teams in this function? Which have just raised money and are unlikely to lose people? Which have just had layoffs or a leadership change? That context matters more than the length of the list.

Then find the roles

For each company, look for the people doing the job you're hiring for, and the people one level below them. Public professional profiles are the main source. Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator make it easier to filter a company by department and seniority, and company pages and press coverage help confirm who holds the top roles.

Put everything in a spreadsheet with a row per person: company, title, how long they've been in the role, and your own note on their level. Keep it simple. A spreadsheet is fast to review, easy to correct, and makes gaps obvious. You can always move it into a tool later.

Level people by what they own

Titles are the hardest part. "Team lead", "engineering lead" and "head of engineering" can mean similar jobs at different companies, or very different jobs at the same one. A senior engineer at a small startup may own more than a director at a bank.

So level people by what they own rather than their title. Do they run a function, a team, or a significant part of the product? How big is the team around them? Your calibration notes help here; our guide on how to calibrate a senior hire covers how to define what you need first.

Use the map before you reach out

Once you have forty or fifty rows, patterns appear. Maybe the people you want cluster in three companies. Maybe the role barely exists in your market, and you'll need to look abroad or hire one level down. Maybe pay at the companies on your map is higher than your band, which is worth knowing before the first call rather than after it. Our piece on Nigeria tech salary data explains why that's so hard to judge from public numbers.

Then pick the fifteen or twenty people who fit best, and write to each of them with a reason this role makes sense for them in particular. Fewer, better messages beat a hundred generic ones every time.

Handle the data with care

A talent map is a list of real people, so treat it that way. Use only information people have made public about their work. Don't collect personal contact details you weren't given, and don't share the map outside the hiring team. If you hire in Nigeria, the Nigeria Data Protection Act sets rules for how personal data is collected and used, and other countries have their own.

Building a good map takes time, which is the main reason founders skip it. If you'd like us to build one for your next senior hire, here's how we work.