Every day the internet becomes more and more important for businesses, and from my experience – both job hunting and later in publicity (which is basically a more technical term for job hunting) – I’ve learned some hardcore ninja moves to find who and what you want.
As part of a two-post series, I’m introducing the Ultimate Guide to finding relevant people and blogs online through a variety of sites and methods. Please feel free to add your tips in the comments section – the goal is to make this the biggest one-stop-shop for getting that info!
The first step is to get names. Applying for a job and you need the name of the hiring manager (sometimes calling just doesn’t cut it)? Putting together an invitee list for a specific event? Doing PR for yourself or a client?
You can find these people a bunch of ways:
- Jigsaw. Get an account with them, it’s free. Once you’re signed in you can sometimes see the names of certain people who work there without having to “purchase” anything. For big companies this is usually the case.
- LinkedIn. Go to a company and just browse the employees. Usually you can see the names for the first 10 pages or so. Some people choose to block their names for whatever reason, but you can get a few this way.
- ZoomInfo. VERY infrequently you can get the names of the head hanchos at big companies, but more important than the names is the information you can get. Company history, press, title, events attended, sometimes even contact information is all available in one place.
Getting Contact Info
And speaking of email, the next step is to get their contact information, which is surprisingly easier than getting names. All you need is one email address. This is the email formula. I just usually “purchase” this via Jigsaw. For example: Mary Smith is president of Bank X. Because Mary Smith is a big deal, her email is nowhere to be found. So I go to Jigsaw and find the name of the SVP of Sales. His name is Bob Jones. So I purchase his contact info. His email is bjones@bankx.com. Therefore, Mary Smith’s email is (90% of the time): msmith@bankx.com. Get this picture?
After a while, you start realizing the formulas are completely unoriginal. It’s usually some variation of msmith@bankx.com, mary.smith@bankx.com, mary_smith@bankx.com, or, if it’s a small company: mary@bankx.com. Usually after the @ is the name of the company, but sometime is differs. Like Deutsch Bank is @db.com (again, I say usually).
It’s a lot of guessing and you’ll definitely get some returned messages. Sometimes I plug in a guessed email address in to Google like this “mary.smith@bankx.com” (use quotes when searching for email addresses, this prevents sites with the person’s name and company name without the address from popping up) and see if anything comes back. Sometimes her email will be on some online database that you can then access.
Dig Though Old and Future Events
Sometimes conferences or seminars will give the contact info for their speakers. At the very least, they’ll give their names. So Bank Conference might say: “We’re proud to be hosting a Lunch Seminar with Mary Smith, President and CEO of Bank X”. Make sense? So when you start running dry, Google “bank conferences for women” or “business lunch seminar” etc etc. Google every variation you can think of.
Also, when you find a name you can plug it into ZoomInfo. If they’re important enough you should get a decent amount of info to make sure they’re appropriate (see #3 above).
Random Tips I’m Too Lazy to Categorize
There are a lot of business directory services that you have to pay for but some will give you a free trial. Lead411 is a good one.
Googling titles also works sometimes. Ex: Google “CIO of Bank X”. Sometimes articles will show up that include the person’s name.
This is a lot, but you sadly can’t get all this stuff from one place. It’s a lot of surfing around for hours (I know, lots of fun), variations on search terms, and serious digging.
Notes
*A note on “purchasing” — take advantage of any and all free trials. You don’t need to pay upfront, just make sure to cancel before they charge you. As for Jigsaw, for every contact you input, you can then “buy” a contact with those points. So add your contacts OR do the community tasks. You usually get cut off at around 5 contacts unless you’ve been a member for a while, so I have about 5 accounts with them. As I write this I realize I’m exposing my little scam, but I’m sure I’ll survive the scandal.
**A note on spam — Don’t.
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