Where to look, in order
Every source below is public, free and checkable. They are listed in the order most teams should wire them up.
- Public job boards. Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, SmartRecruiters and Recruitee cover a large share of software companies, and each posting is dated.
- Company newsrooms and RSS. Leadership changes, expansions and launches, stated by the company.
- Regulatory filings, where applicable. In the US, ownership changes and material events are public.
- Funding announcements, from the company or the investor.
- Regulatory registers, for rules with effective dates that create work for your buyers.
How to tell a signal from noise
Four tests, and a real signal passes all four: is it dated, is it specific to one company, did that company state it themselves, and does it imply a budget or a deadline?
A cluster of job postings passes all four. A general news mention passes two. A website visit passes one. That ranking is the whole method.
The window for each
Hiring clusters are most actionable in the first two to four weeks, while the work is being scoped. Funding has a longer tail, a quarter or two, because the spending follows the raise. A new function head is worth reaching in their first ninety days. A regulatory deadline is worked backwards from the date, and the useful moment is when scoping starts, not when the rule bites.
Using the signal without quoting it
The signal chooses the account and the timing. It should almost never be the first line of the message. "I saw you are hiring four data engineers" tells the recipient something they already know and marks the message as automated.
Instead, write about the problem the signal implies. If they are staffing a data team, the message is about what usually breaks in month three of that build. The research shows in the specificity, not in the citation.