Key Insights
- Competitor job listings can reveal upcoming products, services, or market expansions before they publicly launch.
- Systematic monitoring via job boards, watchlists, and alerts gives community financial institutions an actionable competitive intelligence edge.
- Tracking peer compensation data in job listings helps community financial institutions retain key employees and stay competitive.
In 2018, robotics and AI company Anki introduced Vector, a palm-sized desktop autonomous robot that was created to act much like pet. When Anki went bankrupt in 2019, Vector was suddenly unusable, as its features such as voice recognition and logic processing were tied to cloud servers. Vector owners were thrilled when another company named Digital Dream Labs (DDL) purchased Anki’s assets and kept Vector going through a subscription model. But DDL’s fate was the same as Anki’s and the company went bankrupt in 2024. But thanks to a group of Vector enthusiasts who reverse engineered the robot’s firmware and operating system, the robots not only remain operational today but are even more sophisticated than they were originally designed to be.
The benefits of reverse engineering are not limited to the world of technology. As community financial institutions (CFIs) strive to keep up with their competitors, taking a reverse engineering type of approach to the job listings of peers can provide valuable insight into the plans and initiatives other organizations are pursuing.
The benefits of reverse engineering are not limited to the world of technology. As community financial institutions (CFIs) strive to keep up with their competitors, taking a reverse engineering type of approach to the job listings of peers can provide valuable insight into the plans and initiatives other organizations are pursuing.
Peer Job Listings: A Glimpse of the Future
Financial institutions routinely track things such as the deposit rates, loan terms, and mortgage promotions of competitors to remain as competitive as possible. Yet, many organizations overlook the wealth of information that can be gleaned from the job postings of competitors. Since financial institutions typically need to hire employees with specific expertise before launching new products or services, introducing new technologies or expanding their footprint into a new geographic area, an organization’s job listings can give insights regarding their future plans.
For example, if a competitor posts an advertisement seeking certified financial planners, wealth management advisors, or trust officers, it likely indicates that organization is seeking to vary its revenue streams by ramping up advisory services. A job posting recruiting individuals with expertise in an area, such as agriculture, can indicate that a financial institution is looking to expand its commercial lending practice by moving into new niche areas.
Not only can keeping a close watch on competitors’ listing can give CFIs an idea of the areas their competitors are focusing on, but if they move quickly it can give them the time necessary to shore up existing relationships with their own clients in these same areas before their peers even have a chance to begin marketing new services.
For example, if a competitor posts an advertisement seeking certified financial planners, wealth management advisors, or trust officers, it likely indicates that organization is seeking to vary its revenue streams by ramping up advisory services. A job posting recruiting individuals with expertise in an area, such as agriculture, can indicate that a financial institution is looking to expand its commercial lending practice by moving into new niche areas.
Not only can keeping a close watch on competitors’ listing can give CFIs an idea of the areas their competitors are focusing on, but if they move quickly it can give them the time necessary to shore up existing relationships with their own clients in these same areas before their peers even have a chance to begin marketing new services.
Competitor Job Information Can Help with Employee Retention
Beyond providing a glimpse of how competitors are shifting their strategies, the job listings of peers can also be a useful tool to help with retention of key employees. In an environment where organizations are having difficulty filling certain skill sets and recruiting employees with specialized expertise, holding onto senior and qualified employees is more important than ever. Competitors’ job listings can provide valuable insights into things such as salary ranges within the region where a CFI operates, signing bonuses, and even the types of work arrangements being offered by other organizations. This information can be used to ensure that an organization’s own compensation structure remains attractive enough to retain key employees.
Mining job listings of peers can also help CFIs ensure that their career development initiatives remain competitive. Job listings that ask for specific skills such as the Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist certification (CAMs) provide insight into the expertise that peers put the most value in and can help CFIs ensure that their professional development programs focus on the right skill sets. An increase in job listings for certain areas of expertise, such as compliance or risk management, can also point to heightened regulatory oversight in certain areas.
Mining job listings of peers can also help CFIs ensure that their career development initiatives remain competitive. Job listings that ask for specific skills such as the Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist certification (CAMs) provide insight into the expertise that peers put the most value in and can help CFIs ensure that their professional development programs focus on the right skill sets. An increase in job listings for certain areas of expertise, such as compliance or risk management, can also point to heightened regulatory oversight in certain areas.
How to Mine Competitor Job Listings
If your organization isn’t yet actively monitoring the job listings of competitors, the following are steps your CFI should consider taking:
- Create a competitor watchlist to track three to five direct and emerging peers in both your immediate and nearby areas to gain a comprehensive overview of how your market is changing.
- Assign a specific person, such as a human resource specialist, to run focused searches on major job listing platforms such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor, as well as the websites of competitors. Searches should be conducted on a weekly basis and should track information such as: job titles; compensation; location and work arrangements (remote, on-site or hybrid); specific skills or technologies being sought or mentioned; reporting hierarchy and posting frequency.
- Look for emerging patterns in job data collected, such as references to niche tools; new functions that suggest a competitor is shifting its focus; upticks in hiring within certain markets or even job listings that are reposted for a significant amount of time, which can hint at difficulty recruiting specific skill sets.
- Set Google alerts to expand monitoring efforts beyond traditional job boards to capture news articles about leadership appointments, press releases about new hires or funding news and announcements about new product or service launches.
- Consider paid talent intelligence platforms. There are multiple organizations that provide dedicated labor market intelligence tools that aggregate listings from all of the major job listing platforms and can even create alerts for specific listing types or the creation of new positions within certain geographic areas.
It may not be possible to learn everything about competitors’ thinking and plans for the future, but tracking peers’ job listings can provide valuable clues about the direction they are moving in well before new products or services are launched. And as CFIs strive to fill gaps in expertise and hold onto key employees, information gleaned from job listings can be valuable on both fronts.
