Hiring data is information taken from job postings: which roles a company has open, where, at what seniority and pay, and when each opened and closed. It measures intent to hire rather than hires made, and it gives a dated record of where a company is investing.
How it is collected
The original record of a company's roles is its own job board, read through the public feed of its applicant tracking system. A collector dates the first and last appearance of each posting, which gives its open and closed days. Each posting is then labelled, for example by job function and seniority level, and advertised pay is put on one currency scale.
How it is measured
- Open postings: roles open at the end of a day.
- New postings: roles seen opening that day, leaving out those already open at the first read.
- Net new postings: new minus closed, the direction of hiring demand.
- Mix: the share of open roles by function, seniority or country.
- Intensity: open postings divided by stated headcount, which compares companies of different sizes.
Common mistakes
- Counting raw postings. Evergreen roles stay open for years, and a role closed and reopened looks like a new one.
- Counting the first read of a board as new postings. Every role looks new that day, though most were opened earlier.
- Reading a move to a new applicant tracking system as a hiring freeze. Postings fall to zero, then return.
- Treating postings as headcount. A role can stay open for months or be withdrawn unfilled.
In Fokals data
The hiring dataset delivers Job Postings, one record per posting; Hiring Activity, with daily open, new and closed postings for each company; Sales Team Metrics, weekly; and Sales Pay Benchmarks, pay quartiles for sales roles by role and country. Postings carry one of 26 job functions, one of 9 seniority levels and ten role flags under a frozen label version. Every posting is dated, a role already open when a company enters the record sets a baseline and is never counted as new, and advertised pay sits on one annual US-dollar scale, so companies compare directly. The use case on equity research works through the measures.
Related terms
- Applicant tracking system: the software that publishes a company's board.
- Job function and seniority level: the two main labels on a posting.
- On-target earnings: base plus variable pay at full target, as sales roles advertise it.
- Alternative data: the wider family hiring data belongs to.
Frequently asked questions
What can hiring data tell you about a company?
It shows where a company is putting money before the spend reaches its accounts: which functions it is growing, which countries it is entering, whether it is hiring senior or junior staff and what pay it advertises. A sharp fall in new postings can mark a hiring freeze. It does not show who was hired, how many roles were filled or what the company plans beyond its own advertisements.
Where does hiring data come from?
From job postings that companies publish: on their own careers pages, on the boards of applicant tracking systems and on job sites. Some providers read the employer's own board and others collect from job sites. Ask which, and whether the provider keeps the date it first saw each posting, because that date is the one a back-test can use.
Does a job posting mean a company is hiring?
Usually, but a posting is a public intention to hire, not a hire. Some are evergreen pipelines, some are withdrawn unfilled and some are reposted. Read open postings and net new postings together, and compare a company with its own average before treating a change as growth.