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Track high-signal career moves before they’re public. Talent Signals surface the people moves that matter in private markets (new founders, stealth startups, and key hires), often before a company is announced, before a round is disclosed, or before a hire shows up in a press release. Each signal pairs the event with the full profile of the person it’s about, so you can act on it immediately.

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Data categories

  • New founders. People leaving roles to start companies, including stealth activity.
  • Job changes. Senior hires, promotions, and role switches across companies.
  • Stealth activity. Early signals of companies being built before public launch.
  • Career context. Previous roles, companies, and background to judge signal quality (the full profile is embedded in every signal).
  • Signal quality. A confidence score (signal_score, 1–10) and timing indicators (out_of_stealth_advantage, months caught before the public announcement).
Example (trimmed)

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Endpoints

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How to use the API

Monitor a feed (most common) Create a Talent Signals search in the Specter app and share it with the API, then poll Get talent signal saved search results with new_results_after set to your last read, to pull only the signals added since. Discover the searchId with Get all saved searches. Sweep a date range Get talent signals by date returns every signal across all people, newest first. Bound it with signal_date_after / signal_date_before (both inclusive) and page through with page/limit (50 per page). Use it to backfill history or to catch everything in a window without a saved search. Look up one person’s signals Get person talent signals returns a single person’s complete signal history from their person_id, newest first, with the same date bounds. Don’t have the ID? Search entities by name resolves it for free. Signals are fetched one person at a time, so loop over your cohort. Expand from a signal

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Good to know

  • Talent signal IDs are UUIDs; the person_id is prefixed per_.
  • signal_score is a 1–10 confidence score; out_of_stealth_advantage is how many months early Specter caught the move versus the public announcement.
  • Every signal embeds the full person profile (career history, education, skills, and links), so no extra call is needed for the profile itself.
  • talent_last_signal is true when it’s the person’s most recent signal.
  • Saved searches must be shared with the API (or created via it) to be reachable; empty results are valid, not an error.
  • Every endpoint here is charged per signal returned. Get talent signals by date and Get person talent signals page at 50 results, so a full page costs 50 credits; narrow the date range before widening the page count. See each endpoint’s “Costs” note.