How to make a company org chart
and map one from public sources

01

How do you make a clear org chart for your own company?

An org chart answers two questions: which departments and teams the company is divided into, and who reports to whom. Before you start, decide who it is for. For new employees, departments and their heads are enough. For leadership discussing a reorganization, you often need to go down to teams and headcount.

1. Set the scope and depth

   Decide whether to chart the whole company or a single department, and how far down to go. Four or five levels already fill a chart, so split anything deeper into sub-charts.

2. List departments and roles

   List every department, team and leadership role. Put roles at the same level on the same row, so the height of each box shows its level.

3. Draw the reporting lines

   A solid line means direct reporting, and each box has only one solid line going up. A dotted line means functional oversight or a second reporting line, for example when regional finance also answers to finance at headquarters.

4. Fill in each box

   Write the department, role and name in each box. A version shared outside the company can show roles only, and you can add headcount where it helps.

5. Check it and date it

   Ask each department head to check it for mistakes, and put the date of the update in a corner. Once the organization changes, an old chart will mislead people.

Units outside the main line, such as assistants, committees and temporary project groups, go off to the side on a branch of their own. Do not force them into the trunk. Excel, presentation software or an online diagram tool will all do the job. When the hierarchy is shallow, the hierarchy templates built into presentation software are fastest.

02

What are the common org structures, and how do you chart a corporate group?

The type of structure decides what the chart looks like. Here are the three most common. In practice many companies mix them: headquarters organized by function, the business by division, and R&D projects staffed as a matrix.

• Functional structure

  Departments are split by function: R&D, production, sales, finance and HR each report to the general manager. The chart is a tree with clear levels, suited to companies with one main line of business.

• Divisional structure

  The company is split into divisions by product, region or customer. Each division has its own R&D and sales, while headquarters keeps functions such as strategy, finance and HR. On the chart, branch by division first, then lay out the functions beneath each one.

• Matrix structure

  People report both to a functional department and to a project or product line. Draw the main reporting line solid and the other one dotted. Common in companies running many R&D projects.

A corporate group is usually charted in two tiers. The first chart shows the group headquarters’ functional centers and the subsidiaries, business groups or business segments beneath it, with each unit shown only down to its head. Each of those units then gets a chart of its own. Legal entities and internal business segments do not always match one to one: one subsidiary may carry several lines of business, and one line of business may be spread across several companies.

One more thing that is easy to mix up: a shareholding chart and a management chart are two different things. Who controls whom and how much they own is one chart. Who manages whom and who reports to whom is another. Draw them together and they are easy to misread.

03

How do you find a competitor’s org chart? What public information can headhunters use?

The chart a headhunter draws is usually not of their own firm but of a target company, or a client’s competitor. When a mandate comes in, you need to know which team the right people sit in, who leads it and who they report to. When you are getting to know a sector, you also start by working out how its main companies are structured. In the trade this is called mapping, and some call the result a talent map. The big difference from charting your own company is that you have no internal list. You can only piece it together, bit by bit, from public information.

• Website, press releases and public talks

  The business segments and leadership list in the company profile, and the titles given in press releases and conference speaker bios. Good for building the top two or three levels.

• Careers pages and job descriptions

  New teams, stated reporting lines, team sizes and required levels show where the company is growing and how its teams are divided.

• Papers, patents and open-source projects

  Author affiliations, inventors and project maintainers can fill in the people on technical teams, but treat them as leads only.

• Your own CV database

  Candidates who have worked at the company list their department, team and manager in their CVs, often in more detail than public sources.

Build the skeleton first, then add the people. Use the website and press releases to set the business segments and departments, use careers pages to fill in the teams below, and only then put names in the boxes. Do it the other way around, and one or two highly visible people can easily pull the whole chart out of shape.

Use only what public channels show and what candidates tell you about their own careers. Do not dig into private information unrelated to work.

04

What should you mark as unconfirmed on a chart built from public information?

A chart pieced together from public information will always have inaccuracies. What matters is keeping what is confirmed, what is inferred and what is still a gap apart, so that a chart which looks complete does not fool you. These are the cases where mistakes happen most.

• An external title is not an internal level. A director at one company may manage a very different scope from a director at another.
• A shared byline is not a reporting line. The authors of one paper, or the inventors on one patent, may come from different teams.
• Old news goes stale. The head named in a press release two years ago may have changed roles since.
• The same name is not the same person. It only counts when the company, the time period and the field all line up.
• A new team on a careers page may still be forming, or may just be roles posted ahead of time.

A practical approach is to note three things beside every box: the source, the date and how far it is confirmed. Three levels of confirmation are enough. Confirmed: two or more independent sources agree. To verify: only one source, or an inference. Gap: you know the position exists, but not yet who holds it. In Excel, that is just three extra columns.

05

How can HunterBuddy help you map a target company with AI?

HunterBuddy is an AI assistant for headhunters, built by Boseek for independent headhunters and senior search consultants. Here is the example from our homepage and product video: say you want to map Xingchuan Robotics alongside two peer companies, Tuojie Robotics and Qiongding AI.

• Tell it which companies and teams to look at. It finds departments and reporting lines in public information, puts people in the right positions and notes where each piece of information came from.
• When a lead comes from a paper’s authors or a patent’s inventors, it is flagged as still needing an identity and employment check, and co-authoring a paper is not taken as a reporting line.
• People on the chart are checked against your CV database and merged only after their identity is confirmed, not just because the names match.
• Positions you know exist but cannot yet put a name to are marked separately. You can also import an org chart you built in Excel and keep filling it in.

• Team lead confirmedTuojie Robotics · Vision team

  The website and the team page agree: it is Yue Lin, already in your database.

• Current employment to verifyQiongding AI · Controls team

  The lead comes from a paper’s authors. Identity and current employment still need checking.

• GapXingchuan Robotics · Product delivery

  The role is known, but not yet who holds it.

Whether the department names and reporting lines are right, whether a person on the chart is the one in your database, and which gaps are worth filling: all of this is left for you to confirm. Who to contact, and what to say, is also your call. HunterBuddy is still in development, with an invitation-only trial.

06

How do you use a target company’s org chart, and how often should you update it?

Its most direct use is sourcing. When a role comes in, look at which team on the chart is the closest fit and who sits where, then decide where to start looking. In business development, it also helps you see which line of business a company is expanding, so you have more to say when you talk.

There is no fixed schedule for updates. Follow the signals: a funding round, a new business launch, a leadership change, a sudden batch of new roles on the careers page, or a change in the public career history of someone you follow. Change only what has changed each time, and keep the old versions. Who has left, and which team has merged into which, are leads in their own right.