Data as Category Definition: How Original Research is Reshaping Recruiting Intelligence

Creating a new software category isn’t just about claiming a label – it’s about defining how the market thinks about a problem. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Amit Bhatia shared how his company is using data leadership to shape the emerging recruiting intelligence category.

Understanding the Category Challenge

“I think recruiting intelligence is an emergent category today. It’s a category that people understand and buyers understand,” Amit explains. “But there’s still a lot of dissonance in the market as to what it exactly means.”

This ambiguity creates both challenge and opportunity. “There’s a lot of players, including us and a lot of other players that lay claim to being recruiting intelligence,” Amit notes. “And I think in the next three or four years you’re going to see a lot more clarity and standardization about exactly what does recruiting intelligence mean and entail.”

Leading with Data

Rather than just claiming the category, they’re actively defining it through original research. “One of the things that we like to do is to lead with data. We sit on an enormous amount of data. And if there’s one thing that recruiting has always been enormously hungry for and starved off, it’s great data sets,” Amit explains.

Their research program is systematic and ongoing. “A year ago we put out this incredible tech hiring report. Six months ago we put out a report on the state of distributed and remote hiring we recently put out a bunch of data about deni trends.”

Uncovering Market-Moving Insights

Their research has revealed surprising insights that help customers make better decisions. For instance, they discovered that pandemic-driven changes in remote work preferences have intensified rather than diminished. “When the pandemic first hit, twice as many women applied to remote and hybrid remote jobs as applied to on site jobs,” Amit shares. “Fast forward today with a more normalization. Not only are we seeing that two x hasn’t gone back to normal, it’s close to three and a half x.”

These insights create immediate business value. “It’s baffling. But it also, it’s a phenomenal arbitrage opportunity for any company that’s struggling to hit DEI goals.”

Defining Success Metrics

Amit believes the key to category leadership lies in defining how the industry measures success. “I think the best way to ultimately influence the way we think is by helping define the metrics by which we measure success in our industry.”

He draws a parallel to how other companies have shaped their categories: “The reason HubSpot became a massive company is because they got to define customer acquisition cost and benchmark it, and everybody else rallied around their definition. We’ve got to be able to define the cost of hire metric in our industry that everybody rallies around.”

The Path to Category Leadership

The stakes are high. “You had asked, how are we going to become the defining company, an emerging category of talent intelligence, effectively, how are we going to become $100 billion company in a trillion dollar market?” Amit notes. “And the only way we’re going to become $100 billion company in trillion dollar market is if we become the company that gets to defined, the defining metric.”

This focus on data leadership shapes every aspect of their go-to-market strategy. Even their sales process is data-driven. “When a company comes on board, every conversation we have with them is about their jobs, about their process, about their data sets.”

For B2B founders looking to create new categories, the lesson is clear: don’t just claim a category label – shape how the market thinks about and measures success in your space. By consistently producing valuable market insights and defining key metrics, you can become the company that shapes how an entire industry operates.

The future of recruiting intelligence is still being written. But through systematic research and data leadership, Amit’s team is ensuring they’re holding the pen.