What a talent map is
A talent map, or market map, is a structured picture of the people who could plausibly do a specific job, built before anyone is approached about a vacancy. For a senior role in Vietnam it typically contains between twenty and sixty names, organised so that the client can see the shape of the pool rather than just its size.
A complete map generally includes:
- Named individuals currently holding an equivalent role, with employer and approximate tenure
- The companies worth targeting, and the ones not worth targeting, with the reasoning
- An indicative compensation range based on what comparable people are actually paid, not on survey midpoints
- A read on mobility - who has recently moved, who has been in post long enough to be open, who will not move at any price
- Structural observations: where the pool concentrates geographically, which adjacent sectors produce transferable candidates, and where the brief is over-specified
How it differs from a shortlist
A shortlist answers "who should we interview". A map answers "what does this market contain". Those are different questions and the second one often changes the first.
The most common outcome of a mapping exercise is not a hire. It is a revised brief. A client asks for someone with industry experience, process depth, fluent English and a specific functional background, and the map shows that eleven people in Vietnam meet all four, nine are not moving and two are already known to the client. At that point the useful conversation is about which requirement to relax, and it is far cheaper to have it before a search has run for two months.
This is also why we do mapping before shortlisting on our own mandates rather than treating it as an upsell. A search built on an unexamined brief is the most expensive kind.
When mapping is worth doing on its own
Entering the market
A group with no presence in Vietnam has no way to calibrate. The map shows what leadership actually costs here, which is frequently more than a regional benchmark suggested, and who the credible operators are. See building your first leadership team in Vietnam.
Planning a succession
Where an incumbent will leave in nine to eighteen months, mapping lets you build a relationship with external candidates long before the role opens, without signalling anything. By the time the seat is vacant the approach work is done.
Testing a business case
If a new function or site depends on being able to hire a particular kind of leader, the map tells you whether that assumption holds before the budget is committed.
Benchmarking an internal candidate
A board considering an internal promotion often wants to know what the external market looks like. A map answers that without running a search the internal candidate would find out about.
Checking a salary band
Published salary guides in Vietnam aggregate widely and lag the market. A map of thirty actual people in actual roles is a sharper instrument for a specific position.
What it does not do
A map is not a guarantee that the people on it will move, and it is not a recruitment campaign. Names on a list have not been approached, have not expressed interest and may never do either. Anyone presenting a map as though it were a pipeline is misrepresenting it.
It is also perishable. A map of a senior pool in Vietnam is accurate for perhaps six to nine months before enough people have moved to make it misleading.
How we run it
Within a live search mandate, mapping is part of the work and not charged separately - you see the map before you see a shortlist. As a standalone exercise with no search attached, it is scoped and quoted on its own, because the research effort is the same whether or not a hire follows.
Either way, the map is a document you keep. See fees and engagement model for how this sits commercially.