Any more or less experienced recruiter knows that, as a rule, passive candidates are more valuable company assets than active job applicants. Unlike active applicants looking for a job, passive candidates already have a place of employment and, most likely, are quite content with it. On the one hand, it may seem that passive candidates lack the motivation to respond to a new employment offer. Still, some experienced pros will consider changing their employment if a new offer is more valuable.
Active candidates, on the other hand, are usually young experts who still lack valuable job experience. There can be exceptions to this rule, but according to statistics, 75% of recruiters prefer negotiating their offers with experienced, passive candidates. When it comes to critical, important job openings, 95% of recruiters will search for passive candidates rather than consider active applicants.
Why Recruiters Should Email Passive Candidates?
As the term ‘passive candidate’ suggests, a person like this will not show any interest in your company, send you a resume, or initiate the first contact. So, it becomes a recruiter’s job to ‘lure’ these valuable assets out. LinkedIn would seem a logical start. However, employed experts are not always active on this social network. Besides, it takes a lot more creativity to catch someone’s attention via LinkedIn offers because everyone does it. So, truly qualified pros often ignore messages with new job offers.
Email, on the other hand, is a more certain means of catching someone’s attention — provided, of course, you are using a valid email address. Luckily, today’s recruiters can get publicly available email addresses in a few clicks — if they use the right tools for that. Let’s check out top software for recruiters that can help them initiate contact with passive candidates.
Voila Norbert
Voila Norbert is a very simple and affordable email lookup tool. Of course, like all simplistic tools, it does have its limitations. To find someone’s email address, you will need to enter the first and last name of the person you are looking for, along with their mail client. Sometimes, this could be enough to get that contact you need. Still, in some cases, you may not have all the information the tool needs from you, which is a huge drawback. On the upside, this finder offers 50 free searches a month, so if you do not plan to look up people every day, you can try your luck with this tool.
SignalHire Email Finder
In contrast to the above tool, SignalHire email finder is way more versatile. This service is a browser extension that supports all major social networks, LinkedIn included. So, you do not have to search their database manually — you can click on the extension button while viewing someone’s LinkedIn profile and get that email you are looking for. More than that, SignalHire will also provide you with up-to-date phone numbers and even backlinks to the person’s social media accounts. All of this will give you a better idea of the candidate you are about to contact.
Manually searching SignalHire internal database of 400+ million contacts is also an option. Registered users can do bulk search by industry, skillset, company, etc. Any results you get can be exported in a neat CSV file. So far, this tool is one of the most functional ones online. Note, however, that you only get five free searches. When they expire, you will need to get a paid subscription. Fortunately, the pricing is both flexible and reasonable.
Email Hunter
Email Hunter is another simplistic tool similar to Voila Norbert. However, it remains quite popular because it offers 150 free searches every month. The search logic is a bit different and does not require a person’s first and last name. Instead, you can enter the company’s name and get all the email addresses registered with this business. On the whole, this simple tool can prove useful if you know your candidate’s place of employment. However, browsing through dozens of emails can be time-consuming.
Google & Social Media
Finally, do not discard traditional email lookup options. First, you can try googling the email you need. Making a few educated guesses here would not hurt, especially with common, widespread names. Play with different combinations of first and last name, followed by different mail clients. Also, remember that sometimes only the first letter of a name (first or last) can be displayed in an email address. Trying out a few most logical email combinations can sometimes be more fruitful than simply googling an address by the candidate’s name.
Also, consider looking up your passive candidates on social media. Even if a LinkedIn profile does not mention a valid email, Facebook or Twitter might. When looking up people on Facebook, check out if they manage any pages — usually, those have a valid, fully functional email available.
Bottom line, if you are not ready to pay for professional software, there are quite a few combinations that can help. If you do not look up emails every day, there is a good chance to find the contact you need for free.
