Search Exhaustion System: Know When a Market Is Actually Covered
Replace “we searched everywhere” with observable coverage evidence.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-06
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Inputs
- Role artifact
- Lane-level discoveries and retained candidates
- Identity-resolved duplicate counts
- Donor-company map
- Query/source history
1. Define the searchable market
Clarify strict requirements, flexible tradeoffs, geography, verification-sensitive criteria, and approved adjacent titles before judging whether the market is small.
2. Track coverage by lane
Record which independent hypotheses have been tested: direct titles, adjacent roles, donor companies, public technical evidence, research evidence, ATS rediscovery, provider search, and other relevant lanes.
3. Watch marginal yield and duplicate pressure
As a search matures, useful new discoveries often decline while duplicates rise. Those signals are more meaningful when identity resolution is reliable and every lane uses the same fit threshold.
4. Distinguish exhaustion from search failure
Low yield can mean a genuinely narrow market, a broken query, unrealistic requirements, weak source coverage, bad geography assumptions, or insufficient evidence—not the same diagnosis.
5. Produce an exhaustion memo
Summarize what was searched, what remains unexplored, which requirements collapse the pool, and what tradeoff would reopen the market.
What to measure
- Retained candidates per lane
- Unique contribution rate
- Duplicate pressure
- Unexplored lane count
- Requirement sensitivity
Failure modes to avoid
- Counting raw profiles as market coverage
- Stopping after one database
- Ignoring duplicates
- Calling a role impossible without testing tradeoffs