{"id":1069,"date":"2026-10-16T14:16:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2026-10-16T14:20:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:20:46","slug":"talent-market-mapping-hiring-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/recruiting\/talent-market-mapping-hiring-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Talent Market Mapping Before You Commit to a Hiring Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>The hire everyone says is &#8220;impossible&#8221;<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A fintech in Warsaw asks for a senior data engineer who also understands payments compliance. Someone who can build transaction pipelines and translate requirements from the risk team into data checks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The TA lead has a feeling this person barely exists. The CFO has a start date in mind. The hiring manager says &#8220;just find them.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before committing to the search, bring a first market snapshot to the planning meeting. Show which experience you found, what remains unclear and which responsibilities the existing team could cover.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Talent market mapping can help with that decision. For this exercise, the output is a short, dated record of the profiles you reviewed, the experience they describe and the questions still open. Combined with a check of your internal team\u2019s capacity, it helps you compare ways to cover the work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Warsaw company and hiring brief are hypothetical. The profile examples come from an actual Wandify search run on 16 October 2026, shown in the screenshot below.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 1. Write the decision, not the search<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Put one question at the top of the document:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Should we hire one person to own both the data pipelines and the compliance logic, or split the two?&#8221;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then write down what evidence would change the answer. For this role, you need to know whether profiles show people doing both kinds of work, and whether your existing team could cover one half. The market cannot answer the second part. Someone has to ask the head of risk.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep three routes in view for the whole exercise:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Route A.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One specialist who has done both.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Route B.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A data engineer, supported by your compliance team.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Route C. A risk analyst who defines and tests the data checks, with an existing data engineer responsible for building and maintaining the pipelines.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are options to compare, not predictions about which is cheapest or fastest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before you open a single profile, agree on what would rule a route out. If nobody in the company can support Route B, it is not a real option, however many engineers you find. More search results will not fix that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CIPD&#8217;s<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cipd.org\/en\/views-and-insights\/thought-leadership\/insight\/workforce-planning-intelligence\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">July 2026 piece on workforce intelligence<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> argues for the same habit: test your assumptions against a few plausible scenarios instead of defending the first plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 2. Run the search and save what you find<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/en\/recruiting\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wandify<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> AI Search, describe the experience in plain language, the way you would explain it to a colleague:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cData Engineer, Poland, payments or banking pipelines, worked with compliance, AML or fraud teams\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start with Poland as the location and, for the engineering routes, Data Engineer as the title filter. Wandify\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/product\/ai-search-in-wandify-a-practical-guide\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AI Search guide<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recommends starting with one or two filters. Record this as an engineering search: it cannot fairly test Route C, which needs a separate search for risk analysts. If the wording itself needs work, turn the job description into a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/sourcing\/job-description-to-sourcing-brief\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sourcing brief<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> first.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Skim the results and save the relevant profiles to a new folder. Name it so a colleague can find it later: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Market map: payments data engineer, Poland, Oct 2026<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1071\" src=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/screenshot-1792159986047-0-1-300x136.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"547\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/screenshot-1792159986047-0-1-300x136.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/screenshot-1792159986047-0-1-1024x463.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/screenshot-1792159986047-0-1-768x348.jpg 768w, https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/screenshot-1792159986047-0-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 547px) 100vw, 547px\" \/><\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Save the source profiles in the folder and link them from your notes so a colleague can check your reasoning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wandify helps you discover and organise profiles. Review the full profiles before drawing conclusions about experience; confirm interest, availability and salary expectations in conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 3. Make it reproducible<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Write down, right at the top of your notes:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the date you searched<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the tool and the exact query<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the location and any filters<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">how you picked which profiles to read (all of them? the top 30?)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A sample taken from ranked results shows what that search surfaced. It does not describe everyone in Poland with this background. Say so in the notes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two small rules save arguments later:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A profile&#8217;s location is not willingness to relocate or commute. Keep those in a separate column marked unknown.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If a profile is too thin to judge, write &#8220;insufficient information.&#8221; Do not count it as a match, and do not count it as proof that the skill is missing.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remove duplicates before you report a number. And keep the meeting version anonymous: grouped findings and a few unnamed examples, not a wall of names.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 4. Write each finding in three parts<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For every pattern you notice, record:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Observation:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> what the profile actually says.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Interpretation:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> why it might matter for one of your routes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Next check:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> what you would need to confirm before relying on it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here is what the search actually returned for the Warsaw brief.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These three records come from the top of a real Wandify search run on 16 October 2026: the query above, filtered to Poland and Data Engineer. The screenshot shows the search results; the records below omit names and employers. The observations refer to the visible cards, with fuller experience left for the next check.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Record A.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Observation: a profile headlined &#8220;Data Engineer | PySpark | AWS&#8221; shows four years as a big data engineer at a global consulting firm. The card mentions no payments, banking or compliance work.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interpretation: worth reviewing for the engineering work in Route A or B. The card alone does not establish project depth or domain experience.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next check: open the full profile and ask whether any client work involved regulated financial data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Record B.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Observation: a profile headlined &#8220;Big Data Expert | Spark &amp; Scala Specialist&#8221; shows a senior big data engineer role at a large European bank since March 2022, with Kafka, Scala and Hadoop among the skills. The card says nothing about AML, fraud or compliance teams.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interpretation: the banking context makes this a useful profile to investigate. Working at a bank does not establish responsibility for payments pipelines or compliance-related data checks.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next check: what the bank&#8217;s data work covered, and whether this person worked with risk or compliance colleagues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Record C.<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Observation: a profile headlined &#8220;Data Engineer &amp; Cloud enthusiast&#8221; shows a data engineer role at a pharmaceutical company, with Kafka and Scala in the skills list and no further detail.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interpretation: insufficient information to assess the domain requirement. Experience from earlier roles or projects may be missing from the card.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next check: review the full work history. If it adds no relevant detail, leave the domain experience unconfirmed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Read the three together. They show why card-level information can leave a requirement unresolved. They do not establish that the combined role is rare or that Route B is better. Review full profiles, try alternative search wording and investigate the open questions before recommending a route.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In your own map, link each observation to its source and note when you checked it. Record whether the evidence came from a result card, a full profile or a conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 5. Don&#8217;t mix up different sources<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Job adverts show how employers describe related work. Keep them separate from professional profiles. In its <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/employmentandlabourmarket\/peopleinwork\/employmentandemployeetypes\/methodologies\/measuringlabourdemandvolumesacrosstheukusingtextkerneldatauserguide\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">UK Textkernel methodology<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the ONS explains that an online advert may cover multiple positions or a speculative opportunity. That is a useful caution when reading advert counts, not evidence about demand for this role in Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the same reason, do not divide profiles by adverts and call the result &#8220;candidate availability.&#8221; Different sources, different coverage, different update cycles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If pay could change the decision, get a proper salary check from a source built for that. If relocation matters, ask people. Until then, leave those cells as &#8220;unknown.&#8221; An honest blank is more useful than a confident number borrowed from a different role.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Step 6. Bring a recommendation with conditions<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Summarise the map by route: what the profiles support, what internal help it needs, and what could stop it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the Warsaw hire it might read:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Keep Routes A and B open. We still need to confirm whether the profiles reviewed include both pipeline delivery and compliance-related data work. Route B is viable only if the risk team can define and validate the rules while the engineer owns the pipelines. Next step: the CTO and head of risk agree that split, and TA checks the unresolved experience before recommending a route.&#8221;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is a conditional proposal, not a promise that the role will be easy to fill. If the combined role is non-negotiable, say what extra research you would need first, and set a review date tied to the next business decision. Don&#8217;t invent a &#8220;right&#8221; sample size or a time-to-hire.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Copy this one-page template<\/b><\/h2>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><b>Field<\/b><\/td>\n<td><b>What to write<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Decision required<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What must leadership decide before approving the hire?<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Work to cover<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What must the person own, and what can colleagues support?<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Research boundary<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tool, date, geography, query, filters, how profiles were picked, duplicates removed<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Observed patterns<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What profiles say, grouped by responsibility and location<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hiring routes<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A, B, C, or your own<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conditions per route<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internal support needed, constraints, evidence still missing<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unknowns<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pay, interest, availability, mobility, real technical depth<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recommendation<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Which route to explore next, and what would change your mind<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Owner and review date<\/span><\/td>\n<td><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Who resolves the open question, and before which decision<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>Where this leaves you<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A useful market snapshot gives the hiring manager something concrete to discuss: which experience you found, what remains unconfirmed and what support each hiring route would require.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Try it on your next hard role.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wandify.io\/en\/recruiting\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Run the search in Wandify<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, save the profiles to a folder and fill in the template. The interpretation and the final call stay with your team.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hire everyone says is &#8220;impossible&#8221; A fintech in Warsaw asks for a senior data engineer who also understands payments compliance. Someone who can build transaction pipelines and translate requirements from the risk team into data checks. The TA lead has a feeling this person barely exists. The CFO has a start date in mind. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,22,28,53,54],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wandify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}