LinkedIn Talent Insights: Track Competitor Headcount & Growth

The "Headcount Signal"

When a competitor starts hiring aggressively, it's a signal.

• Engineering growth? They are building a new product.
• Sales growth? They are expanding to a new territory.
• Marketing growth? They are about to launch a campaign.

LinkedIn Premium gives you some of this data, but it's expensive and manual. In this guide, we'll build a Competitor Watchlist that tracks headcount changes automatically.

The Tech Stack

We'll use the SociaVault API to fetch company profiles.

Prerequisites

• Node.js installed
• A SociaVault API Key
• axios for API requests

Exploring LinkedIn data options? Check our LinkedIn API alternatives guide.

Step 1: The Company Fetcher

We need a function to get the current "vitals" of a company.

const axios = require('axios');

const API_KEY = 'YOUR_SOCIAVAULT_API_KEY';
const BASE_URL = 'https://api.sociavault.com/v1/scrape/linkedin';

async function getCompanyVitals(companyUrl) {
  try {
    const response = await axios.get(`${BASE_URL}/company`, {
      params: { url: companyUrl },
      headers: { 'x-api-key': API_KEY }
    });

    const data = response.data.data;
    
    return {
      name: data.name,
      employeeCount: data.employeeCount, // e.g., 1001-5000
      followerCount: data.followerCount,
      description: data.description,
      locations: data.locations
    };
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(`Error fetching ${companyUrl}:`, error.message);
    return null;
  }
}

Step 2: The "Growth Delta" Calculator

To find trends, we need to compare today's data with yesterday's (or last month's). Since we don't have a database in this script, we'll simulate the comparison logic.

function calculateGrowth(current, previous) {
  if (!previous) return { delta: 0, percent: 0 };

  const delta = current - previous;
  const percent = ((delta / previous) * 100).toFixed(2);

  return { delta, percent };
}

Step 3: The Watchlist Script

Let's track a few tech giants.

const COMPETITORS = [
  'https://www.linkedin.com/company/openai',
  'https://www.linkedin.com/company/anthropic',
  'https://www.linkedin.com/company/google'
];

// Simulated "Last Month" data for demonstration
const MOCK_DB = {
  'OpenAI': { employees: 750, followers: 2500000 },
  'Anthropic': { employees: 300, followers: 150000 },
  'Google': { employees: 180000, followers: 30000000 }
};

async function runTalentScout() {
  console.log("🕵️‍♀️ Starting Talent Scout...");

  for (const url of COMPETITORS) {
    const company = await getCompanyVitals(url);
    if (!company) continue;

    // In a real app, you'd fetch 'previous' from your database
    const previous = MOCK_DB[company.name] || { employees: company.employeeCount, followers: company.followerCount };

    // Note: 'employeeCount' from API might be a range or exact number depending on the profile type
    // For this demo, we assume it returns a parseable number or we'd need a parser
    const currentEmployees = parseInt(company.employeeCount) || 0; 

    const growth = calculateGrowth(currentEmployees, previous.employees);

    console.log(`\n🏢 ${company.name}`);
    console.log(`----------------------------------------`);
    console.log(`Employees: ${currentEmployees.toLocaleString()} (${growth.percent}% growth)`);
    console.log(`Followers: ${company.followerCount.toLocaleString()}`);
    
    if (growth.percent > 5) {
      console.log(`🚨 ALERT: Aggressive Hiring Detected! (+${growth.delta} staff)`);
    }
  }
}

runTalentScout();

Why This Matters in 2025

Talent is the leading indicator of strategy. By the time a press release comes out, it's too late. By tracking headcount, you see the investment before the announcement.

Next Steps

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