competitor-research: from client to competitor

Why this matters

The perspective is a recruitment search, but the method is valid for any competitor or market research. The recruitment view adds a source that is often overlooked: the people who work (or worked) at those companies. A company list is the means; the people behind it are the goal.

The output is a verified target list of companies. It feeds candidate sourcing, which is a separate skill.

Golden rule: start with the client

Always start from the CLIENT, unless told otherwise. Candidates from a direct competitor are almost always the most interesting: they know the products, the customers and the market, and need the least ramp-up.

From the client, derive three things: - their competitors - their technology area - their market (customers, applications, sectors)

Widen the search depending on the role

Competitors are the core, but not the whole picture. What else counts depends on what the role actually needs:

• Sales roles: also look at companies that SERVE THE SAME CLIENTS, even if their products differ. The customer relationships and the market knowledge are what transfers. Example: a Sales Manager for defense electronics is a strong fit for another defense contractor that specializes in optronics.
• Engineering / development roles: skills transfer across application domains. If someone knows Python, they know Python, no matter what is being programmed. This is not entirely true (domain knowledge still matters), but it shows the direction: for technical roles, the technology can matter more than the industry.

Client analysis: how to get from client A to competitor B

This is where the real search starts. Work through all of the following, since each source surfaces companies the others miss.

a) Product and technology pages of the client. Extract keywords: products, technologies, applications, standards.

b) Trade fairs the client attends. Only those relevant to the job. Large companies attend many diverse fairs; a fair for a business unit that has nothing to do with the role only adds noise. Exhibitor lists are a very rich source.

c) Industry associations and lobbying organizations the client belongs to. → b) and c) surface competitors as well as companies working with the same technology or in the same market.

d) Systematic web search. Not every company attends fairs or joins associations, so a structured web search is always an additional, separate route to relevant companies and information.

e) Job ads of the client and of candidate competitors. Often more revealing than the company websites, because companies have to be specific when they hire. Job ads show: - department and team names (e.g. "Battery Management Software" at a carmaker), which tell you exactly where in a large company the relevant work happens - locations, so you know which site to target - which technologies are actually in use (not just in the marketing copy) - at which level a topic is being built up right now (team leads, engineers, heads of), which helps to judge seniority and salary fit Sources: the companies' career pages, Stepstone, Indeed and specialized job boards. Ads also reveal new competitors: a company hiring for the same technology is in the same market, even if it doesn't show up at fairs. Department names from ads are also excellent search terms for step f).

f) LinkedIn: last, but definitely not least, and the starting point for the target list. Search the keywords, technologies and industries. People tend to stay in the industry or technology they know, which makes career paths a reliable map of the market: - Look at the client's own employees: where did they work BEFORE? Those previous employers are often competitors or adjacent companies. (The employees themselves become important later, when identifying suitable candidates. That is covered by another skill.) - Look at profiles of people who have worked in the relevant technology or with the relevant keywords: which companies show up in their careers, past and present? Companies that appear repeatedly are strong candidates for the target list.

g) Double-check every company on its own homepage before trusting it. A name on a list or a keyword match is not enough (see the Java example below).

Completeness: make sure nothing big is missing

A target list that misses an obvious major player is worse than a short list: the client notices immediately and the whole research loses credibility. Agents typically fail here in three ways: they stop after the first good results, they silently narrow the scope (e.g. "German companies" instead of "companies active in Germany"), and they drop what they could not verify yet. These rules prevent that.

1. Fix the frame before searching. - Geography: "active in the target country/market", NOT "headquartered there". International companies with a local presence always count. Example: the client is Porsche. A competitor list for the German market that names only German carmakers and leaves out Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren or the Chevrolet Corvette would be embarrassing. They are all sold, serviced and marketed in Germany, and their people are in Germany. - Segments: derive them from the client's business units, one competitor list per segment. A multi-division client has different competitors per division. Example: Porsche competes with Ferrari in sports cars, but with Range Rover and the BMW X5 in SUVs (Cayenne), and in e-mobility with Tesla. A company can be a direct competitor in one segment and irrelevant in another. - Size tiers: cover all of them: global primes, large national players, mid-sized specialists (Mittelstand), small specialists, startups.

2. Big players first (mandatory check). Before any niche search, list the global top players of each segment, e.g. from industry rankings (for defense: SIPRI Top 100 or Defense News Top 100; for cars: registration and sales statistics) or market reports naming "key players", filtered by segment. Only then go into specialists. A Porsche competitor list with a small tuning specialist but without Ferrari is not finished, no matter how good the niche finds are.

3. Use several independent registers. At minimum: trade fair exhibitor lists, industry associations, public tenders and contract awards (e.g. EU TED, national procurement agencies), market reports, job ads, LinkedIn. Each register surfaces companies the others miss.

4. Saturation rule. Do not stop when the list "looks good". Stop only when two or three further independent sources add no new relevant names.

5. Separate discovery from verification. Never drop a company because it is not verified yet. Keep it on the list marked "unverified" and verify it later via its homepage. Silent omission is the worst failure, because nobody sees what is missing.

6. Work in a matrix, not a flat list: companies × segment × source(s) × status (verified / unverified). Gaps become visible at a glance, e.g. a segment without any large player, or a company found in only one source.

7. Independent review pass. When possible, give the finished list to a second agent (or a fresh session) that has NOT seen the research, with the question: "Which obvious companies are missing from this list for [client, segments, market]?" It catches blind spots the first pass can no longer see. Add its finds as "unverified" and check them.

8. Flag partners. Mark companies that cooperate with the client (joint ventures, partnerships, key suppliers or customers). They may be in the same market but are sensitive to approach for candidates. Check the client's press releases for announced cooperations.

Keyword discipline

Keywords drive every step above, so they have to be right.

• Never copy a word blindly. Check what is behind it. "Java" can be tea or a programming language; many technical terms are just as ambiguous.
• Once the term is correct, expand it: synonyms, bordering and adjacent technologies.
• Germany: always search BOTH the German AND the English term. Companies, fairs and profiles use both, often inconsistently.
• Good sources for keywords: Wikipedia (as a start), scientific papers, trade fairs (very rich).

Match rule

A company is a MATCH when: 1. matching or related keywords AND the company appear together in at least one of the registers above (fairs, associations, web search, job ads, LinkedIn), AND 2. the company's own homepage confirms it.

Only verified matches go on the target list.