How a talent research project actually runs.
No black box, no proprietary-methodology mystique. Here is the sequence, what you receive at each checkpoint, and where projects go wrong when the sequence is skipped.
Every Audentia project runs through the same six stages: define the decision, agree the market boundary, identify target organisations, research the population, validate the findings, then interpret and hand over.
The fee is fixed at the point the boundary is agreed, and the complete working file transfers to the client at the final stage.
Stage by stage
Six stages, each with something you can look at.
You are never more than a week from a tangible checkpoint, which is how you know early if the brief was wrong.
Define the decision — day 1
A free scoping call. What will you do differently once you have the answer? Open a site, restructure, revise a band, make a hire, defend a plan to the board. You receive: a written statement of the decision and the questions the research must answer.
Agree the market boundary — days 2–4
Function, seniority, geography, sector, and the capabilities that genuinely cannot be substituted. We argue with you here on purpose. You receive: a signed scope and a fixed fee in pounds. Nothing beyond this point changes price without your written agreement.
Identify target organisations — week 1
The employers holding that capability across the UK, plus adjacent sectors where it transfers. You receive: the organisation longlist with a rationale per entry, for you to challenge before we research anyone.
Research the population — weeks 1–3
Named individuals with current role, scope, location and tenure, and the structure of the function around them. You receive: an interim population count at the halfway point, so you learn early if the market is thinner than assumed.
Validate the findings — week 3
Verification against primary sources, confidence marking, and explicit flagging of what could not be confirmed. You receive: the validated dataset with sourcing notes.
Interpret and hand over — week 3 onward
The answer to the decision from stage one, with the reasoning shown. You receive: the interpretation document, a live walkthrough with your team, and full ownership of the working file.
Where projects fail
Six ways talent research goes wrong — and what we do instead.
| The failure | What it looks like | How we prevent it |
|---|---|---|
| The boundary is never agreed | Scope drifts weekly, the population keeps growing, nobody can say when the work is finished. | Boundary signed off in writing at stage two. Changes are re-quoted, not absorbed. |
| The decision was never named | A beautiful map arrives and sits unread because no one knows which meeting it was for. | Stage one is the decision, not the role. If there is no decision we say the research is premature. |
| Volume stands in for accuracy | Two thousand names, none verified, most in the wrong function or the wrong country. | Every record carries a source and a confidence marker. Unverified stays labelled unverified. |
| Salary data is averaged into mush | One national figure that matches nobody, with London weighting silently baked in. | Base, bonus, pension and equity reported separately; London weighting isolated from base. |
| Adjacent markets are ignored | Only direct competitors are searched, so a genuine talent pool two sectors over is invisible. | Adjacency is scoped deliberately, with a written rationale for each sector included or excluded. |
| The findings are never interpreted | A data dump lands in an inbox. Nothing changes as a result of it. | Stage six is a recommendation and a live walkthrough, not a file transfer. |
Data practice
Primary research, confirmed against sources, held under UK GDPR.
Talent research handles personal data, so it sits squarely inside the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. We record a lawful basis for every project, restrict the fields we hold to what the brief actually requires, agree a retention period in the engagement letter and honour subject rights on request.
What that means in practice: we confirm rather than harvest. A name that appears in a deliverable has been verified against a primary source, and a field we could not confirm is left empty rather than filled with an inference.
- A lawful basis recorded for every project before research begins
- Data minimisation — we hold only the fields the brief needs
- Retention periods agreed in the engagement letter, not left open
- Subject access and erasure requests honoured on request
- Confirmed against primary sources; inferences are never presented as fact
- Client identity withheld from every individual we approach
Working standard
What we commit to on every engagement.
These apply to every service and every project size. Where we cannot meet one on a particular brief, we say so before you commission it rather than afterwards.
- A written scope agreed before work begins, so nothing is disputed at delivery
- A fixed fee in pounds quoted against that scope, with no variable element
- A named researcher who works your brief end to end rather than a rotating pool
- Every material finding confirmed against a second independent source
- Anything unconfirmed flagged as unconfirmed, never presented as fact
- An interim checkpoint partway through, so problems surface early
- Findings that contradict your brief presented first, not buried in an appendix
- A live walkthrough with the people actually making the decision
- Complete, permanent handover of every record in your format
- A documented UK GDPR lawful basis, agreed retention and a processing note
What we will talk you out of
A scoping call is not a sales call, and the most useful outcome is fairly often that you should spend less than you intended. Because no fee is contingent on a placement, saying so costs us nothing.
- A full map when a scan would answer it. If the real question is whether a market is worth pursuing at all, a two-week scan answers it for a fraction of the cost.
- An executive search when your team can run the process. If the gap is market knowledge rather than process capacity, a map or a sourcing project gets you there for considerably less.
- Research with no decision attached. If you cannot say what you will do differently with the answer, we will suggest waiting until you can.
- A refresh cadence your market does not warrant. Quarterly refresh on a slow-moving industrial population is a way of spending budget, not a way of staying current.
- Mapping when the problem is the proposition. If the band is uncompetitive or the working pattern is out of step with the market, more research will document that rather than solve it.
Working with us — practical questions
What do I have to give you before the work starts?
A decision you are trying to make, a rough market boundary and one person who can approve the scope. We do the rest of the definition work with you in the scoping call — that call is free and is not a pitch.
Can we change the scope halfway through?
Yes, and clients often do once the first checkpoint reveals something unexpected. We re-quote the delta in writing before continuing. What we will not do is silently expand the work and invoice for it afterwards.
What format does the deliverable arrive in?
A working spreadsheet or database of the population, a written interpretation document, structure charts where relevant, and a walkthrough session with your team. If your ATS or HRIS needs a specific import format, we will match it.
What happens if the research says the role is not fillable?
We tell you, in writing, with the count behind it. That is a successful project. Knowing a role cannot be filled at the current specification and salary in the current location is worth considerably more than six months of an empty requisition.
What happens in a scoping call?
We establish the decision behind the request, the market involved, the timeline and the constraints. Thirty minutes is usually enough to know whether we can help and what the right shape and size of project would be. There is no charge and no obligation.
How quickly do you produce a proposal?
Usually within two to three working days of the scoping call, setting out the defined scope, the deliverables, the timeline and a fixed fee. If the scope is unusually complex we will say so rather than quote a number we might need to revisit.
What if the scope changes mid-project?
We stop and agree it with you in writing before doing the work, with any fee implication stated up front. Scope creep absorbed silently is how research projects end in disputes, so we do not absorb it silently.
Who actually does the research?
A named researcher who specialises in your function and market, working your brief from scope through to the delivery walkthrough. You deal with the person who did the work, not an account manager relaying it.