Map the talent market

/rp-market-map — Competitive Landscape Mapper

Map the talent landscape for a specific role and market. Produces a structured brief covering: who competes for this talent, where these people currently work, what they earn, which skills are trending, and whether this is a buyer's or seller's market right now.

Uses WebSearch to pull real salary data, job posting volume, and market signals. Zero API cost beyond Claude usage.

Input

Parse the user's argument to extract:

• role_title — the job title to map (e.g., "Senior DevOps Engineer", "Head of Product", "ML Engineer")
• location — city, metro, state, or "Remote US" (e.g., "Austin, TX", "New York", "Remote US")

Generate a slug from the combination: {role-slug}-{location-slug} (e.g., senior-devops-engineer-austin-tx).

If the location is missing, ask before proceeding. Location context is required for accurate comp data.

Step 1: Load Config

Check if ~/.recruiter-skills/config.yaml exists. If it does, read it. The recruiter.specialties, recruiter.target_industries, and icp fields provide context for which companies and candidates to prioritize in this map.

Step 2: Research Phase (WebSearch)

Run the following searches in sequence. For each, extract the most relevant data points. Do not include raw search result text in the output — synthesize and attribute.

2a. Compensation Data

Search queries (run 2-3 of these, pick the most data-rich results):

• "{role_title}" salary "{location}" 2025 site:levels.fyi OR site:glassdoor.com OR site:linkedin.com/salary OR site:salary.com
• "{role_title}" compensation range "{location}" 2025
• "{role_title}" pay "{location}" percentile

Extract: base salary range (25th/50th/75th percentile if available), total comp if relevant (for tech roles), equity/bonus norms.

2b. Job Posting Volume and Demand

Search queries:

• "{role_title}" jobs "{location}" site:linkedin.com/jobs OR site:indeed.com OR site:greenhouse.io
• "{role_title}" "{location}" hiring 2025

Extract: approximate number of active postings, which companies are actively hiring, how long postings have been up (proxy for difficulty to fill).

2c. Competitor Companies (Who Hires This Role)

Search queries:

• companies hiring "{role_title}" "{location}"
• "{role_title}" "{location}" team site:linkedin.com
• top employers {role_title} {location} OR remote

Extract: 8-15 specific companies that hire this exact role in this market. Categorize by type: (a) direct competitors for talent, (b) feeder companies (where candidates come from), (c) destination companies (where candidates want to go).

2d. Talent Pool Locations (Where These People Currently Work)

Search queries:

• "{role_title}" "{location}" linkedin.com/in
• "{role_title}" professionals "{location}"
• where do "{role_title}" work "{location}"

Extract: The top 5-8 companies where this role concentration is highest right now. These are the hunting grounds.

2e. Skills Trends

Search queries:

• "{role_title}" required skills 2025
• "{role_title}" job description requirements 2025
• what skills does a "{role_title}" need 2025

Extract: must-have skills (appearing in >70% of postings), nice-to-have skills, and skills that are declining in relevance (being replaced by newer tools/tech).

2f. Supply/Demand Signals

Search queries:

• "{role_title}" talent shortage 2025 OR "{role_title}" oversupply 2025
• "{role_title}" hiring market 2025

Extract: Is this role in shortage (hard to fill, candidates have leverage) or surplus (many qualified applicants, clients have leverage)? Any recent layoffs or hiring freezes in this category?

Step 3: Synthesize and Write the Market Map

Format the output as a structured brief. Use these exact section headers with the separator style shown:

MARKET MAP: {Role Title} — {Location}Generated: {today's date}━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MARKET VERDICT━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Supply/Demand:    CANDIDATE MARKET / BALANCED / CLIENT MARKETDifficulty:       EASY (1-2 wks) / MODERATE (3-5 wks) / HARD (6+ wks) to fillComp Pressure:    RISING / STABLE / SOFTENING[2-3 sentence summary of the market right now]

COMPENSATION RANGES━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Base Salary (25th pct):  $XBase Salary (median):    $XBase Salary (75th pct):  $XTotal Comp (if relevant): $X - $XEquity:   [typical range or "uncommon in this market"]Bonus:    [typical % or "not standard"]
Notes: [any caveats — remote premium, startup vs enterprise delta, etc.]

WHO COMPETES FOR THIS TALENT━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Tier A (Top-pay, hardest to pull from):  - [Company] — [why they're a strong retainer]  - ...
Tier B (Reachable — realistic sourcing targets):  - [Company] — [brief note]  - ...
Feeder Companies (Where talent comes from before going to Tier A):  - [Company] — [note]  - ...

WHERE THEY CURRENTLY WORK (Sourcing Targets)━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Highest concentration of this title:  1. [Company] — [estimated count or confidence level]  2. ...
Search tips:  - LinkedIn search: title:"{role_title}" company:[top companies]  - GitHub search (for technical roles): [specific language/tool] contributors in [location]

REQUIRED SKILLS (what every JD asks for)━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Must-have:   [comma-separated list]Nice-to-have: [comma-separated list]Fading out:  [skills that were standard but are being replaced]Emerging:    [skills starting to appear in job postings that will be standard by 2026]

ACTIVE HIRING (companies posting right now)━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Company] — [role variant they're hiring] — [number of postings if found]...
Observations: [any patterns — e.g., "3 companies posted in last 2 weeks, suggesting a wave"]

RECRUITER NOTES━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[3-5 practical bullets a recruiter needs to know before working this market.Examples: candidate leverage, common objections, title inflation patterns,remote vs in-office norms, red flags to probe in screening,things clients consistently underestimate about this role.]

Step 4: Save Output

Target path: ~/.recruiter-skills/data/research/market-map-{slug}.md

Ensure the directory exists:

mkdir -p ~/.recruiter-skills/data/research

Write the full formatted brief to that file. Confirm the path at the end of your output.

Step 5: Suggest Next Step

After delivering the map, suggest ONE action based on what the data showed:

• If active job postings were found at specific companies: "Run /rp-signals {company} to check for fresh hiring signals at [top company from the active hiring list]."
• If the role looks hard to fill (candidate market, HARD difficulty): "Run /rp-source {role} in {location} (requires RapidAPI key) to begin candidate sourcing with the talent pools identified above."
• If the recruiter doesn't have candidates yet for this role: "Run /rp-resume-screen with any resumes you have to quickly identify who fits the comp and skills profile above."

Output Format Rules

• Use plain text with the separator and header style shown above. No markdown ## headers.
• Attribute data sources inline when relevant ("per Glassdoor data", "based on LinkedIn job postings").
• If data wasn't findable for a section, say so explicitly: "[Could not find reliable comp data for this location/title — suggest using Levels.fyi manually for this one]"
• Do not fabricate salary figures. If search results are thin, give a range with explicit low confidence note.
• Keep the brief scannable — a recruiter should absorb it in under 5 minutes.