How to Build a Market Map for an Executive Search

A market map is the homework behind every search you win. Before you can name a shortlist, you need to know the shape of the market the role lives in: which companies actually sit in scope, where the talent concentrates, and what the seat really pays. Done well, it turns a cold sector into one you can speak to with authority in the room. Done badly, or skipped, it is why a well-run firm loses a pitch to a competitor that did more reading.

This is the method behind every market map we build. It’s built around one rule: every figure has to trace to a source you can click. A number you can’t defend is worse than no number, because a client who catches one loose claim stops trusting all of them.

Start with the scope, not the names

The most common mistake is jumping straight to a candidate list. You end up with the obvious people everyone already knows, and you miss the companies that quietly grew the exact profile you need.

Define the market first, in three passes:

• The core. The companies that are unambiguously in scope: direct competitors, the same product, the same buyer. These are non-negotiable inclusions.
• The adjacent ring. Businesses one step out: a different model or a nearby vertical that grows a transferable skill set. This is where the non-obvious, un-poached candidates usually sit.
• The edge. The stretch cases you’ll consider only if the core runs thin. Naming the edge explicitly keeps the map honest: you’re saying why something is a stretch, not quietly padding the list.

Write the inclusion logic down. When a client asks “why isn’t Company X here?”, the answer should already be on the page.

Size the market before you profile anyone

A shortlist means nothing without a denominator. If there are only nine companies in the country that run the function at the scale your client needs, the search strategy is completely different from one where there are nine hundred.

Public data gets you most of the way, for free:

• Company counts and geography. The U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns breaks establishments down by industry (NAICS) and geography, which is enough to sanity-check how big a pool you’re really fishing in and where it clusters.
• Public filings. For any listed company in scope, SEC EDGAR gives you the org structure, named executive officers, and (in the proxy statement) real compensation figures. This is the single most under-used source in search.

The point isn’t a perfect census. It’s to replace “there are lots of them” with a defensible range, and to notice early when a mandate is narrower than the client assumes.

Benchmark the comp with real numbers

Comp is where credibility is won or lost. Guessing a band, or pulling one from a generalist salary site, is the kind of soft claim that gets a map discounted.

Two sources do the heavy lifting:

• Government wage data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program publishes wage distributions by occupation and metro area. It won’t price a specific C-suite seat, but it anchors the surrounding bands and keeps your estimate inside reality.
• Proxy statements. For named executive officers at public companies, the SEC filing is the comp benchmark: base, bonus, equity, the actual paid number. For a senior search, a handful of comparable proxies beats any aggregated survey.

State the vintage of every figure. “2024 proxy” is a fact; the same number quoted three years later, with no date, is a liability.

Build the pool as rings, and mark your confidence

Now, and only now, the people. Organize the pool the way you organized the market: concentric rings from “exactly right” outward, so the client can see the trade-off between fit and reach at a glance.

For each name, hold the line between three kinds of claim:

• Fact. Sourced and current (a title confirmed on a company page or filing).
• Estimate. A modeled or ranged value you can defend but not point-source (a likely comp band).
• Inference. A reasonable read that isn’t confirmed (a probable openness to a move).

Labeling these isn’t hedging. It’s what lets a client act on the map without getting burned: they know which lines to lean on and which to verify.

Name the constraint that actually decides the search

Every search has one binding constraint (the thing that will make or break it), and it’s rarely “finding qualified people.” It might be that the best candidates are all locked up in multi-year equity, or that the role needs a regulated-industry background only a dozen people hold, or that comp expectations outrun the client’s band. A market map earns its fee when it names that constraint on page one, instead of burying it.

If the map doesn’t change how the client runs the search, it didn’t earn its place in the pitch.

The through-line: sourced, labeled, current

A market map is only as good as its weakest claim. That discipline matters more, not less, now that most search firms run some part of this work through AI: a model can draft and summarize fast, but it can’t be the source. Keep three habits and it will hold up in any room:

1. Every figure links to a source. No exceptions, no memory-quoted numbers.
2. Estimates and inferences are labeled as such, so facts stay trustworthy.
3. Every figure is dated, so a stale number can’t pass for a current one.

That is the discipline, and it is how we build every map at MergeSearch: your first month is free, so you can hold a finished Map on a brief of your choice before you decide anything.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (establishment counts by industry and geography).
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR full-text filing search (org structure, named executive officers, proxy-statement compensation).
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (wage distributions by occupation and metro).