I am a huge fan of Apollo.io and the company intelligence it surfaces, but some of its most useful signals are not explained well in the interface. One of the best hidden signals is under Insights → Company Employee Trends, which shows where a target company is actively adding headcount.
I recorded the short video walkthrough below because when I first looked for documentation on how Apollo calculates department bar charts and percentages, I could not find a clear answer anywhere. Rather than waiting on support, I reverse-engineered how the numbers work so you can use them immediately in your outbound and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) targeting.
How the Department Headcount Bar Charts Actually Work
- Spot buying intent by department: If you sell software or services into specific teams (such as Customer Support, Engineering, Finance, or Sales), headcount growth tells you where budget has already been approved.
- Add custom sub-departments: If you do not see your target department in Apollo's default broad categories, open the department dropdown and select specific sub-categories (for example, adding Support alongside standard categories).
- How to read the numbers and parentheses: When Apollo shows a bar like
Sales: 425 (0%)out of970total new headcount,425is the total heads in that category, and the number in parentheses (0%) is the year-over-year (YoY) growth rate for that department.
Full Video Transcript
0:00 Alright, I'm a huge fan of Apollo, some great information, but sometimes it's not explained very well. And one of the areas that I noticed is under insights for company employee trends, like where are they hiring people.
0:15 So I created this video because I tried to find the answer and could not find it. I'm pretty sure if I pinged somebody there they would have gotten back to me, but I just want to figure out some of the stuff myself and not have to talk to somebody.
0:31 Employee trends is pretty powerful. If you are selling products or services into different departments, you can see what's happening to their headcount.
0:41 And one of the things you can do under the departments is if you don't see one here in the broad categories, you can actually pick some of the smaller categories here and add that in.
0:54 So I'm going to look at Support. And then what it will do is it will give you the total new heads for the category added and then the year-over-year growth rate.
1:09 Now, what's really confusing is let's go to one of the bar charts: Sales, 425 out of 970 total new headcount. Roughly almost half. That kind of makes sense in the bar chart, but what is 0% in parentheses?
1:23 Well, that's actually the year-over-year growth rate. Pretty simple once you know what you're looking at, and I hope this helps you target the right accounts.