5 Tips For Finding Hidden Email Addresses For Target Company Contacts

Most job seekers have experienced the “job application black hole”. They submit their resume via a job board, company website interface or email the generic careers@mytargetcompany.com and then hear nothing. So.. to get past the black hole, many job seekers attempt to network their way in to a company or try to directly contact the recruiters or hiring managers involved in the decision making.

Making cold calls to contacts that you don’t know can be intimidating and may or may not be effective depending on the person, the position or even the company hiring process and work flow. So, many job seekers attempt to make the first attempt via email ..… But how do you get their emails?

Note: If you need help finding the contact names before you search for emails, check out this excellent resource: “How to find a contact name inside a target company”, a blog post on Employment Digest.

Once you know the contact names, here are 5 tips for finding their email addresses:

1) Google Search

Enter your contact’s first and last name, company and location in Google search and review the results. You might get lucky! Often times when employees attend or speak at conferences or industry events, their contact info ends up somewhere on the internet. You may also find that your contact has their own website or blog that includes contact info.

2) Detective Work On The Company Website

Go to the company website and review the About Us, Contact Us and Press sections. The websites will often list some type of contact email, ex. info@ourgreatcompany.com, which provides insight into the email format. Then, you can make guesses on the name format. Here are some common options, using my name as an example

• marcireynolds@ourgreatcompany.com
• marci.reynolds@
• mreynolds@
• marci@

Once you have some options, you can test the validity of the email addresses for free at http://mailtester.com

3) Use Boolean Search In Google

Boolean Search Strings are a combination of search terms and logic that allow you to delve into and find information in a database. The internet is an example of a VERY big database. Here’s a simple Boolean string example that you might enter into the Google search box: “Career coach” AND “Boston”.  Career coach and Boston are your search terms, while AND is the logic you added. This will get you the names of career coaches in Boston- not career coaches anywhere.

You can also use Boolean Strings to uncover hidden information including email addresses. Specifically, to find email address formats within company domains enter the following information in Google:

“email * * companyname.com”

Use the quotes & replace the company name with the actual company name and/or website domain.

For example, if you want to find hidden emails at Genzyme, enter “email * * genzyme.com”. You will get more than 40,000 records that list a variety of emails, but most importantly, you will uncover their email format which is First Name DOT Last Name @Genzyme.com.

Special thanks to Gary Cozin, a Sourcing – Search Expert at PNC Financial Services Group in New York for sharing his Boolean Search stylings. Gary has even won awards for his Boole-ocity!

4) Use Online People Directories And Search Tools

I’ve played around with these tools and they’re easy to use, although they do require that you pay a fee for the email results.

• https://www.peoplelookup.com/
• http://my.email.address.is/
• http://www.emailfinder.com

5) Call And Ask For It

Call the main number of your target company and simply ask for your contact’s email address. They may say no for “privacy reasons” or “company policy”, but you never know. You have nothing to lose!

Good luck finding the “hidden” email addresses for your target contacts. Please share any additional tips in the comments section.

Copyright November 2009, Marci Reynolds, All Rights Reserved

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