The number that changes the fee conversation
A client says the role is hard to fill, and the conversation about terms starts from there, on feel. A count changes it. "This many people hold the title inside your radius, this many list the skill you insist on, and most of them sit at four employers" is a sentence that justifies a retained fee, a wider radius or a dropped requirement before anybody has started searching.
It is also cheap to find out. People databases report how many profiles match a search whether or not you buy the profiles, so the play reads the totals and buys almost nothing. The only real purchase is a small sample of profiles, which shows where these people work today.
What you get back
A table with one row per cut: the title nationally, inside the radius, with the must-have skill, at your seniority. Each row carries the count and the source it came from, and where two sources were asked, both numbers. Below it, the main employers found in the sample, the live ads competing for the same people, the title variants and places that were included, and the caveats.
Variations worth knowing
Test a requirement. Count with and without one must-have. If a single skill removes most of the pool, that is a conversation to have with the client before the search, not after it.
Compare two locations. Run the same funnel for a second city or a wider radius. It shows what a hybrid arrangement or a relocation package would actually buy.
Turn the count into the search. Once the role is yours, turn a job spec into a ranked shortlist starts from the same filters. For a pool that turns out to be very thin, map a whole talent pool, including the half that is not looking covers the angles a title search misses.
Where this goes wrong
A filter the database ignored. A total the size of the whole database means a filter was not applied, not that the market is huge. Each added filter has to lower the count, and the agent checks that it does.
Skills are under-reported. Not every database can filter on skills, and many people list none. The skill row comes from fewer sources and undercounts, sometimes by a wide margin.
A radius is an approximation. Place names stand in for distance. Someone who lists only the country falls outside every radius, however close they live.
The employer list comes from a sample. It shows where the clusters are, not the full distribution.
Quoting the count as a census. It is a floor, drawn from sources that each see part of the market. Presented that way it builds trust. Presented as a fact, it invites the client to check it.
