There is no one measure (short of public announcements) that signals the future. However there are many activities and actions which may help produce a reasonable guess about future plans. Job postings are one type of signal that may indicate a company’s future plans.

Most companies are good about publishing their job openings. Some companies even provide information about the level of opening (e.g., director, senior engineer, VP) and the division or product involved. This information can be captured at three month intervals to help identify trends. The captured listing should be sorted by location (certain activities occur at specific locations, product/division and levels). You want to know the following.

• Are job listings increasing or decreasing? (might signal changing R&D investment levels)
• What specialties are listed most? Least? (might signal turnover or expansion)
• Where are the centers of activity and how does this map to known products? (might signal what is being developed)
• What new skills (i.e., those not needed for the company’s known products) are being listed? (might signal new product type)
• How are recent acquisitions/mergers affecting job listings? (might signal plans for integrating the new company)

There are cautions to observe with this type of information. First, a job posting is not a job. That is, the company is making no promise to actually fill a position just because there is a job posting. Second, without turnover numbers, it is difficult to directly understand that a job posting (if filled) represents a staff expansion or not. Third, for companies with large campuses, it is more difficult to match postings with specific products (unless they tell you in the posting).

Mining job listings effectively over time helps the analyst map out the competitor’s future product plans, identify their development centers and understand how they expect to expand (or contract) their competencies.