Introducing mustard TI: Talent Intelligence for Design Businesses

How to hire, who to hire, and when to hire them. Backed by data, not guesswork.

For over 17 years, mustard has supported design-led businesses in building high-performing teams across architecture, interiors, events and the wider creative sector.

But hiring has a problem.

Too many decisions are still made on instinct, fragmented data, or outdated benchmarks, especially when businesses are scaling, expanding, or entering new markets.

So we built something different.

Introducing Mustard TI (Talent Intelligence) — our AI-powered platform designed to bring clarity, speed and confidence to hiring decisions.

By processing thousands of real-time data points across talent pools, salaries, competition and hiring trends, Mustard TI delivers a clear, visual dashboard that can be shared across your business, giving stakeholders a single source of truth for talent strategy.

From reactive hiring to data-driven talent strategy.

The Problem with Hiring Today

Most businesses we work with, particularly in the 20–250 employee range, face the same challenges:

• Over-reliance on contingency recruitment
• Limited visibility of talent availability across different locations
• Uncertainty around salary positioning
• Difficulty predicting how long a role will take to fill
• Strategic decisions being made without clear market insight

This often leads to slower hiring, misaligned expectations, and ultimately costly mistakes.

As businesses grow, these challenges only become more complex.

A Smarter Way to Hire

Mustard TI has been developed to give design-led businesses a clearer, more strategic view of their hiring landscape.

It brings together multiple data points into a single, intuitive platform, allowing teams to assess, compare and plan hiring activity with confidence.

How It Works

At the core of Mustard TI is an AI-driven engine that aggregates and analyses thousands of data points across the talent market.

This includes:

• Talent availability across specific locations and sectors
• Salary data benchmarked against real market conditions
• Hiring demand and competitive pressure
• Seniority, diversity and experience distribution
• Historical trends and directional shifts

All of this is processed and presented in a centralised, visual dashboard, enabling leadership teams, hiring managers and HR to:

• Explore data in real time
• Compare different hiring scenarios
• Align quickly on strategy
• Make informed decisions with confidence

No spreadsheets. No guesswork. No fragmented insights.

Three Ways to Understand Your Hiring Market

1. Salary Benchmarking

Understand exactly where your roles sit within the market.

• Accurate, real-time salary insights
• Benchmarking against competitors
• Alignment with internal structures

2. Talent Mapping

See the true shape of the talent market before you hire.

• Size and depth of talent pools
• Seniority levels available
• Diversity insights
• Competitive landscape

3. Hiring Difficulty & Feasibility

Know what you’re walking into before launching a search.

• Role-specific difficulty scoring
• Estimated time-to-fill
• Market competition analysis

Beyond Hiring: Strategic Decision Making

Where Mustard TI becomes particularly powerful is at a strategic level.

Through custom queries and trend analysis, businesses can answer bigger questions such as:

• Where should we open our next office?
• Which regions offer the best access to talent?
• How is our sector evolving over time?
• Where should we be investing in growth?

Instead of reacting to the market, you can start planning ahead of it.

A Real-World Example

A national architecture practice approached us with a familiar challenge.

Having grown through acquisition, they operated across multiple offices and were planning their next phase of expansion, but lacked clarity on where to focus their hiring efforts.

Using Mustard TI, we:

• Analysed multiple regions against their target roles
• Scored each location based on talent availability, competition and hiring difficulty
• Delivered clear comparisons across regions
• Conducted detailed salary benchmarking

This enabled them to:

• Focus their hiring strategy in the right locations
• Set accurate and competitive salary expectations
• Improve application quality
• Increase their chances of successfully filling roles

Instead of guessing, they moved forward with a data-backed hiring strategy.

Built for Design Businesses

Mustard TI has been specifically developed for the industries we know best:

• Architecture & Built Environment
• Interior Design
• Events, Live & Experiential
• Marketing & Design teams
• Visualisation firms

It’s designed to support both growing businesses and larger organisations looking to make more informed, strategic hiring decisions.

Part of a Broader Talent Offering

Mustard TI sits alongside our wider services:

• Contingency Recruitment
• Executive Search
• Talent Intelligence
• HR Consultancy

This allows us to support the full hiring journey, from insight through to delivery.

A New Standard for Hiring Decisions

Data is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s becoming essential.

Mustard TI is built to help businesses:

• Reduce hiring risk
• Improve outcomes
• Make faster, smarter decisions
• Build stronger teams

Get Started

We’re currently introducing Mustard TI to a select group of clients as part of our launch.

Request a tailored Talent Intelligence snapshot for your business and see what your hiring market really looks like.

To find out more, contact our Project Lead and Operations Director, Joe Bungey.