This document provides an overview of competitive intelligence methods and tools for talent sourcers. It discusses tools for identifying competitors and analyzing talent supply and demand, such as Indeed, EMSI, LinkedIn Talent Insights, Hiretual, and SeekOut. It also covers gathering intelligence from sources like virtual conferences, social media, layoff lists, salary data sites, and org charts. Methods for analyzing intelligence like using multiple sources and demand data are presented. Gathering tools including RSS readers and alert services are also highlighted.

1. Competitive Intelligence Methods
and Tools for Talent Sourcers
Glenn Gutmacher (with contributions from Greg Hawkes)
Jan. 27, 2021

2. What we'll cover (and stuff we
won't that you might want)
Out-of-scope In-scope
People data tools for private investigator and legal purposes like
TLOxp, IRBsearch and IdiCORE (compare the 3 on phone data).
Cannot be used for recruitment use case.
Layoff lists, SOCMINT
Consumer marketing people data & cleaning services like Melissa
Data, Loqate, etc.
Talent Intelligence tools (supply /
demand mapping, org charts)
Similar to above, but recruitment/sourcing is a common use case:
ZoomInfo, Lusha, Loxo Source, Who Knows, etc.
Google Maps
Salary data (some great free ones are PayScale and Comparably
- see Aaron Lintz's comment on this FB thread)
How to pull people data via API / JSON feeds that may be publicly
available but hidden (e.g., Conference App Sourcing course)
Virtual conferences (finding &
webscraping)
How to gather CI by phone/in-person using NLP techniques (e.g,
article | book); can get more extreme with social engineering
CI content aggregation &
distribution tools

3. Indeed Indeed has built in features
(Employer Side):
• Easily Idenitify Competitors
• Can search internationally (per
country)
• Quick and Easy Option

4. EMSI
EMSI is a more advanced CI/Market
Analysis Tool
Pros:
• CB’s old Supply and Demand
functionality
• Can see market maps, companies
hiring in the area, top companies all
built around a job title or skill set
Cons:
• Search parameters have to be pretty
general/basic
• Highly expensive

5. EMSI
EMSI Also has Profile Analytics:
Pros:
• Can pull a target list of 100
candidates
• Includes Contact Info (Phone.
Emails)
Cons:
• General search parameters
• Data may not be the most
accurate/up to date

6. LinkedIn Talent
Insights
LI Talent Insights' Talent Pool
Reports help answer the following
types of questions:
• What skills are in demand in
your industry & broader market?
• What locations are hidden gems
of the talent and skills you will
need to source?
• What companies are your best
targets for finding the type of
talent you need now and in the
future?
• What schools are producing the
type of talent and skills that you
will need to hire in the future?
• How is talent engaging with your
brand today?
Company reports let you dig
deeper on talent to/from
competitors.
Available filters for each here.
Auto-recommended insight
reports about competitors
Smart
suggestions
are quite
accurate
Pros:
• Strong level of detail and range of
reports
• Data exports to PDF or spreadsheet
• Links from insights to corresponding
people (if you have LIR seat) - this
explains slight differences in results
Cons:
• only taps LinkedIn member data
• Female is only diversity breakout

7. Hiretual
Hiretual Insights has every filter in
LI Talent Insights plus:
• Boolean AND/OR on several
diversity categories
• A dozen US security clearances
• US citizen/green card only filter
• Additional Boolean keywords
Top: titles, skills,
companies (past and
current), industries,
locations, avg. salary
(US), years of exp. (total,
current role, company),
degrees and majors
Jump directly to
an (editable)
search of those
people profiles

8. SeekOut
SeekOut.io will remind you of the
previous two in various respects.
You can get insights about:
• A company
• A position
• A role by city area
• Or a narrow set using keywords
An additional unique
offering is their sets of
Power Filters that allow
you to instantly show and
analyze people by:
• Job families
• Skill families
• Top companies in a
subindustry
Jump to those sets of people: useful
particularly when combined with filters
like diversity, Github competency level
by specific technology, etc.

9. Google Maps and Diesel Mechanics
Search diesel
mechanics near
Dublin, Ireland
Use Google Maps to Find Similar
Companies
Pros:
• Works on a global scale
• Great for finding local companies or
places that may not be on your
radar
• Free
Cons:
• Data may be limited
• In this example, you’ll have to call in
(not on LI)

10. Org Charts (Chartloop.com)
5 free bonus org charts to you & me if you sign up via this link
1. Create free account
and type any
company homepage
URL
2. Pick the department
you want (global
results by default)
3. If not already in their
system, it generates
in a couple of hours
4. Zoom in on default
tiny view by holding
wheel atop your
mouse
5. All names/titles are
viewable; export
requires paid tier
h/t Aaron Lintz

11. FYI Layoff Tracker:
Laid Off Employees
Some
comprehensive lists:
- Layoffs.fyi talent list
- Drafted
- COVID-19
aggregated
(see "Layoff Lists
2020" section)

12. FYI Layoff
Tracker:
Companies
Layoffs

13. FYI Layoff
Tracker:
Companies
Still Hiring

14. Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT)
Key points Resources
• It's the subset of open source intelligence (OSINT) focused on data obtainable
from social media websites
• Popular content types include text (posts, blogs, discussion forums, podcasts,
product/service reviews), social bookmarking, images, video, gaming
• StartMe collections
SOCMINT, As_INT and
Lorand Bodo's
Search examples:
• Forums: KEYWORDS (intitle:forum OR intitle:discussion OR intitle:community
OR intitle:user OR intitle:group)
• Feeds: KEYWORD layoff (inurl:feed OR inurl:rss)
• Xlek public records
search (scroll past
ads/below fold)
• Spyse: domain-related
data
Glassdoor how-to (h/t Aaron Lintz) for your target company:
1. Go to their company Reviews page and filter for location, etc.
2. Search source for href='/rss/reviews.rss?id= and note digits following it
Append filter parameters from that URL to this feed URL format:
https://www.glassdoor.com/rss/reviews.rss?id=9331 (ID # is company-unique)
- For more ideas, see slides 17-21, 28 of Aaron's SourceCon 2020 presentation
• Social-Searcher, Mention,
QueryFeed, FaganFinder
and SocialMention make
it easy to search various
SOCMINT channels for
your keywords
Check out the SOCMINT resources compiled by Shally on The Sourcing Method facebook group

15. Virtual Conference Infiltrations
Virtual Conferences:
Pros:
• Free or Reduced Prices to Register
• Often times includes entire Attendee lists
Cons:
• Users may only give limited info
• Advanced scraping/cross referencing needed

16. Virtual Conference Infiltrations
Some of the ways to webscrape such data:
• Aaron Lintz explained a bit here, or take his Conference App
Sourcing online course to go deeper.
• Register for Andre Bradshaw's growing sourcing tools/scripts
repository on Patreon
• Some lists may be scrapable using off-the-shelf webscraping
tools, but probably won't grab the extra contact data fields
behind-the-scenes available by tapping the API.

17. CI Gathering Tools
Tool Options Why Inoreader? (with $50/year total upgrade)
• Use off-the-shelf tool with some
enhancements to basic RSS news
reader, such as RSShub.app,
• Roll your own (e.g., see Glenn's
Google Sheet)
• Get notified when websites change
(Visualping, Hexowatch)
• Turn any webpage into an RSS feed
with FetchRSS or Feedity
• More robust RSS content
managers: ContentGems,
Webhose, and Cronycle
• Unlimited source feeds (including password-
protected ones, social networks, etc.)
• Use filters to see only certain content
• Use tags, stars and folders to generate your own
RSS feed to share
• Actions include send to popular apps (Pocket,
Instapaper, Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox, Google
Drive)
• Auto-generate custom daily e-newsletters that your
colleagues can subscribe to
• Other actions include desktop alert, mobile
notification, group broadcast, tagging, starring, and
trigger webhooks with IFTTT and Zapier
• Keywords color highlighting
h/t Aaron Lintz

18. CI Gathering Tools
h/t Aaron Lintz

19. CI Gathering Tools
h/t Aaron Lintz

20. Intelligence Analysis Tips
Key points Examples
• Use more than one data source, particularly if
your sample size is small
• Confirm your parameters with stakeholders
• Use demand data when trying to understand the
market (job postings, salaries, etc.)
• Also see Bobbie Sue Rogers' recent article
• People insights: Entelo, Hiretual, SeekOut, etc.
• Startup insights: AngelList, CB Insights, Crunchbase,
ExploreBit, Mattermark, Pitchbook, Tracxn, etc.
• Industry analysis: Altimeter, Forrester, Juniper, Gartner,
etc. TalentTechLabs Ecosystem is a comprehensive TA
industry equivalent of Gartner's Magic Quadrants.
• Government/non-profit data: USA, International
• Crowdsourced data: Expatistan, Numbeo
When doing gap analysis:
• Once you determine the total addressable market
and compare it to where you already are/already
target, focus on other locations, companies, etc.,
that represent the plurality of the gap (missing
potential).
• Direct competitors vs. Adjacent companies (e.g.,
vendors that leverage same talent)
• Location factors (cost of living, skill availability, diversity
population) may not matter as much in a COVID-
influenced environment encouraging remote work
Partial source: Olivia Amber presentation at TalentCongress, Oct. 21, 2020