Two Sourcing Methods: “Backwards” and “Shooting In the Dark”

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I have described the Backwards Method in the previous post. To summarize:

Step 1 – collect as many email addresses as possible from pages that may contain relevant ones. Get emails from Google results, pages containing contact lists, anything remotely promising. But probably keep your searches returning only results from the past 2-3 years since both emails and careers get changed fast.

You can get quite creative in Googling. Don’t forget to dig deeper into sites that promise more content judging on snippets.

It is not a problem even if your collection has 98% emails that are “wrong”.

Collect emails. No other info like names is required. Create an Excel File and paste the emails into the first column. Make the second column pass the test for “full names”. Put the full name as “a b” – it will work.

Step 2 – it is best if you have the “old” LIR. Upload the emails, 5K at a time. Tag uploads to search for them later.

Now, when you search for the tag(s) and your requirements, the results will be people whom you can directly email. No InMail points needed.

(If you do not have Recruiter, you can do cross-referencing with other tools and databases.)

That was the Backwards Method.

The Shooting In the Dark Method is similar, but Step 1 is extended further so to speak.

Step1 Advanced – Google for an expression that would point to an email, like a free email domain, or relevant companies’ email domains (also, try several at a time) AND your requirements like the job title and locations. Do not put any limitations on the type of pages. (But always keep an eye on the sites to explore.) Search for something as silly as

<job title> <location> “gmail.com” “directory”

plus a few words to narrow it down to better results if necessary (perhaps, add another job title).

As I run the searches, I keep Julia Tverskaya‘s Email Extractor on in the background. I pause to gather and upload the emails in two cases: 1) the volume is getting close to 5K, 2) I am interested in the addresses from a particular source (so I may tag that upload to “View Insights”).

I won’t recommend running these open-ended searches as a solution for any project. But it’s worth testing what the picture is like for your opening. It has worked very well for me with one of our positions – Clinical Research Coordinator. I was able to figure contacts for a few dozen CRCs out of a couple of hundred LinkedIn members matching the requirement. It is far not everyone, but it didn’t take any time.

Googling this way is creative and fun 🙂

 

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