Getting names in high places

This can help whether you are applying for a job or if you are working in an email marketing environment.

After writing my last blog entry, I decided that to broaden out the subject of contact harvesting. Depending on what your intentions are sometimes you have a need to know the name of a particular person in a particular position in a particular organisation. How can you do this?
Do you want the HR assistant to get your CV in front of? Or the finance director for your marketing campaign? Here are a few tips:

LinkedIn - As I mentioned before, this is a brilliant tool for networking and finding people within organisations. In my previous blog (http://thisisdanh.blogspot.com/2010/07/linked-in-contacts.html) I detailed how you could get around the privacy settings on Linked In to get a name on a profile that is set to "private". Sign up, it's free and brilliantly useful. www.linkedin.com

Jobsite - think about it, HR staff want people to contact them about vacancies. Jobsite publish email addresses of the member of staff running a HR campaign within the vacancy. You may not be interested in that particular role, but it is useful to have that contact all the same.

Google - Google the company you want information on. Look for "contact" pages and "about us" pages. "Meet the team" occasionally crops up, especially in the legal and financial sectors. Failing that search the position in google. For example "HR DIRECTOR at NATWEST" (maybe start smaller) and you may find a published press release with this contact referred to by name.

But what good is a name?

According to my experience 70-80% of emails are of the format firstname.surname@companyurl.com

richard.branson@virgin.com (probably not that obvious)

Take the first name and surname and attach it to the company url - you have the contact details! It is good to search this created email address in Google to see if it has been published before, thereby further validating it.



For more names in other industries try

www.applegate.co.uk

whois.domaintools.com - check the web site admin name

WebCheck - wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk - check company details