How often do knowledge workers track competitors’ hiring trends to make better strategic decisions?

Chances are it's not often enough. Knowing who competitors are hiring can reveal rich information about their next big move. For instance: Are they going to expand their offices? Are they opening a new department? Are they launching a new campaign?

Even though market & competitive intelligence teams regularly monitor online listening posts (i.e., competitor web pages, social media, forums and blogs), they could easily be overlooking niche sites that gather other expert, employee, industry and nuggets of market intelligence altogether.

Article Series: 5 Minutes Can Change The Way We Think & Work

What is considered record-breaking speed in the digital era? In 2009, Usain Bolt showed the world how fast a man could run: 100 meters in a scorching 9.58 seconds. That same year, analysts at EMC found that "the amount of digital information grew over 62 percent in 2008 to 800 million gigabytes." As EMC notes, that is equivalent to “the digital information created by every man, woman, and child on Earth tweeting continuously for 100 years.”

"Competitive Intelligence in Social Media can be either a gold mine, or a minefield." - Anonymous

It's no secret that social media is changing the way many things in our modern business world function. Promoting a product, engaging with your customers, or finding a new job are only a few of the ways which services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn have caused sometimes dramatic shifts how companies interact with their environment.

As part of our US expansion, clearCi is opening an office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and looking to hire Account Executives. The role will be sales and account management focused, and we're looking for motivated culture-fits to help grow our team.

Everyone knows that a candidate brought by referral is often the best fit, and as such we want to make sure that you - our referrers - have as much incentive as possible to spread the word!

Of course it does! Executives and decision makers need to be aware of their entire operating environment, which of course includes the competition. Ignoring it is tantamount to closing one eye while driving.

There are many ways to stay on top of your competitors, but one important avenue which is often overlooked is paying attention to what is happening on LinkedIn. Recently, LinkedIn overtook the dying MySpace as the second most popular social media tool behind Facebook.

In today’s fast-paced and information-overloaded environment, companies of all types need to stay ahead of what their competitors are doing at all times. Of course there are many avenues to find out what your competitors are up to – Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and countless others. The one thing that these sites require is manpower to monitor them; which we all know takes time and money.  Below are three scenarios that demonstrate why all businesses should subscribe to a Competitive Intelligence (CI) software application.