Arrive with something the client cannot get from their own team
Most client meetings are about the client: their vacancies, their process, their complaints. The recruiter who turns up with a view of the market changes the meeting. What is the rival across town building? Which skills are three competitors chasing at once? Is that team growing, or replacing leavers?
Job adverts answer a good part of this, and they are public. A company's adverts, read together and dated, show which functions it is investing in, which locations it is opening up, and how quickly. Nobody at the client has the time to read six competitors' career pages every quarter and count. You do, because the agent does the reading.
It also gives the client a warning. A competitor advertising the same roles in the same city is about to approach the client's own people. That belongs in a retention conversation, and it is one only a recruiter is placed to start.
What you get back
Two pages per client. For each competitor: open roles by function, location and seniority, the number first seen in each month of your window, and the direction of travel where the data supports one. A section on overlap lists the competitor roles that match your client's own teams. Every count names its source, and thin data is marked as thin. Nothing is sent and nobody is contacted.
Variations worth knowing
One function only. A briefing on one skill across every competitor is sharper than everything about everyone, and costs less to run.
Add headcount direction. A company signal source can say whether a competitor's headcount is rising or falling. Set beside advert counts, it separates growth from churn. It is a paid lookup per company.
Brief the client's own account too. For the client's side of the table, see walk into a business development call with a one-page account brief.
Turn the overlap into a search. If the client decides to hire from a competitor, source from named competitors with your off-limits list enforced is the play.
Where this goes wrong
Adverts are not hires. Evergreen adverts, talent pool postings and roles that were filled last month all sit on a career page. Roles handled by an agency, or never advertised, do not. The briefing describes what is advertised.
Reposts inflate the pace. A role taken down and put back up looks like two. Counting each role once catches most of these, not all.
One name, several employers. A competitor that hires under a parent company or several brands is undercounted unless each website is on your list.
Presenting counts as strategy. Twelve adverts for data engineers is a fact. "They are moving into analytics" is your reading. Keep the two apart in front of a client.
The first run has no history. Pace comes from first-seen dates on the first run, and from a true comparison only on the second.
