Power of knowing the competition
Especially in HR
I was in a leadership meeting last year when the CEO mentioned a competitor’s expansion into a new market.
The CFO immediately started talking about pricing implications. The head of product jumped in about feature gaps. Sales wanted to discuss how to position against them.
Then the CEO turned to me. “What does this mean for our talent strategy?”
I had no idea. I didn’t know what the competitor was doing. I didn’t know if they were hiring aggressively or what they were offering people. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation.
That moment made it clear. If I didn’t understand our business competition, I couldn’t be a strategic partner. I was just reacting to problems instead of anticipating them.
HR leaders should understand their business competition. Not as a nice-to-have. As a fundamental part of doing the job strategically.
Most HR people I talk to can tell you about their internal challenges. The retention issues. The hiring struggles. The engagement scores. But ask them about the competitive landscape and you get blank stares.
Who are we competing with for talent? What are they offering? Where are they expanding? What’s their reputation as an employer? How are they positioning themselves?
These aren’t nice-to-know facts. They’re critical intelligence that shapes almost everything HR does.
Talent attraction and retention depends heavily on competitive awareness. You need to know what competitors offer in terms of compensation, benefits, work arrangements, and career development. Without this knowledge, you risk losing top performers to competitors or failing to attract the talent needed for strategic initiatives.
I’ve watched organizations lose multiple people to the same competitor and act surprised every time. Meanwhile, that competitor had been systematically targeting their talent with better comp packages and remote flexibility. HR didn’t see it coming because they weren’t paying attention.
Understanding which companies are competing for the same talent pool helps you craft compelling value propositions. Not generic employer brand messaging. Actual reasons why someone should choose you over the company down the street that’s also trying to hire them.
Strategic workforce planning requires insight into competitive moves. If competitors are expanding into new markets, acquiring certain capabilities, or downsizing in specific areas, you should be preparing your workforce accordingly.
This might mean hiring ahead of anticipated needs. Developing skills that will create competitive advantage. Restructuring teams to respond to market shifts before they hit you.
But you can only do that if you know what’s happening in the competitive landscape. If you’re caught off guard by every competitive move, you’re always playing catch-up.
Here’s what happens when HR doesn’t understand the competition.
You build compensation packages in a vacuum. You benchmark against survey data from two years ago while your competitor just raised their base salaries by 15% and added signing bonuses. Then you wonder why you can’t close candidates.
You lose talent you didn’t know was at risk. Your top performer gets recruited by a competitor you didn’t realize was hiring aggressively in your market. By the time you find out, they’ve already accepted the offer. You scramble to make a counter that’s too little too late.
You miss opportunities to differentiate. You’re investing in perks and programs that every other company offers while missing the things that would actually set you apart. Because you don’t know what competitors are doing, you can’t figure out what makes you different.
You can’t contribute strategically. When leadership is discussing competitive threats and opportunities, you have nothing to add from a talent perspective. You’re waiting to be told what to do instead of helping shape the strategy.
I saw this play out at a company where a major competitor opened a facility nearby. Leadership knew it was coming. They’d been tracking it for months. But HR wasn’t looped in until the competitor started poaching employees.
Suddenly it was a crisis. Retention bonuses. Counter offers. Emergency culture initiatives. All reactive. All expensive. All because HR wasn’t paying attention to the competitive threat early enough to get ahead of it.
If they’d known six months earlier, they could have identified flight risks, had proactive conversations, adjusted comp where needed, and created stickiness before anyone was being recruited. Instead, they spent three times as much trying to fix it after people were already interviewing.
So why don’t more HR leaders pay attention to competition?
Some think it’s not their job. That’s what business leadership does. HR focuses on internal people stuff. Strategy is someone else’s domain.
Some don’t know where to start. Competitive intelligence feels like something you need a team or a budget for. It seems complicated or outside their expertise.
Some are too busy. There’s always a fire to put out. Spending time researching competitors feels like a luxury when you’ve got open roles to fill and performance reviews to finish.
But here’s the reality. If you’re not thinking about competition, you’re not thinking strategically. You’re operating tactically. Solving today’s problems without understanding the context that’s creating tomorrow’s problems.
Understanding your competition doesn’t require a research team or a big budget. It requires intention and consistency.
Start by identifying who you’re actually competing with. Not just direct business competitors. Talent competitors. The companies that hire the same roles you hire. That recruit from the same schools. That target the same skill sets. That show up in your exit interviews when people tell you where they’re going.
Make a list. Five to ten companies that matter from a talent perspective. They might overlap with your business competitors. They might not. What matters is whether you’re fighting them for the same people.
Then track what they’re doing. Set up alerts for their hiring announcements. Follow their careers pages. Watch their LinkedIn presence. Pay attention when they make news about expansion, layoffs, or major changes.
Talk to your recruiters. They’re hearing what candidates are considering. They know what other offers people are weighing. They see what’s resonating and what’s not. Mine that intelligence regularly.
Talk to your hiring managers. They know the competitive landscape for their function. They can tell you which companies are hiring aggressively. Which ones have reputations for great development or terrible culture. Which ones are poaching their people.
Talk to people who are leaving. Not just “why are you leaving us” but “why are you going there.” What did the other company offer that you couldn’t? What did they say that resonated? What’s their reputation that attracted this person?
And talk to people you’re recruiting. Even if they don’t join you, they can tell you what other companies they’re considering and why. What’s compelling about those opportunities? What are those companies doing well?
Once you have this intelligence, use it. Don’t just collect information. Apply it.
If three competitors have gone fully remote and you’re requiring five days in office, that’s data. Maybe your position is justified. Maybe it’s not. But you should at least know you’re making a choice that puts you at a competitive disadvantage for certain talent.
If competitors are offering signing bonuses for a role you’re trying to fill, you need to know that before you extend offers that get declined. You can decide not to match. But deciding without knowing what you’re up against is just gambling.
If a competitor is expanding into a market where you have talent, you need to get ahead of retention risks. Have conversations. Understand who might be vulnerable. Figure out what would keep them before they’re being actively recruited.
This is what benchmarking and market positioning actually mean. It’s not just survey data. It’s real-time intelligence about what competitors are doing and how that affects your ability to attract and keep people.
Picture this. Your CEO mentions a competitor is launching a new product line. Because you understand the competition, you know that product line requires skills you have on your team. You flag the retention risk. You work with leadership to create a counter-strategy. Maybe it’s development opportunities. Maybe it’s comp adjustments. Maybe it’s giving those people visibility into your own strategic initiatives so they see a future here.
The point is, you’re not reacting after people leave. You’re anticipating and getting ahead of it. That’s strategic HR.
Think about the last time someone on your team left for a competitor. Did you see it coming? Did you know what that competitor was offering? Did you have a retention strategy in place or were you caught off guard?
If you were caught off guard, that’s a sign you’re not paying enough attention to competition.
HR’s effectiveness as a strategic partner depends on understanding the same competitive dynamics that drive business strategy. When you can speak the language of competition and tie your initiatives to competitive positioning, you demonstrate business acumen. You earn a seat at the strategic table.
When you don’t, you’re just responding to problems leadership hands you. You’re executing tactics without understanding strategy.
Who are your top three talent competitors? What are they doing right now? And what does that mean for your talent strategy?
If you can’t answer those questions, start there. Because understanding competition isn’t optional for strategic HR. It’s the foundation.