So, you think you’ve found a candidates email? Now what? How sure are you?
Searching for an email address for a candidate can be a slow and sometimes frustrating process. I like to think about it almost like detective work. If I can find enough of their online social footprint, I can often then figure out the email address.
My top two email validation tools:
1. Rapportive: The first tool that I use to validate an email address is Rapportive, a fantastic add-on for Gmail.
To use Rapportive, simply put an email address into your email using Gmail. If that email is the address that the person registered with LinkedIn, it will come back with their LinkedIn profile (as well as Google Plus & Facebook). If you enter more than one address at a time, you’ll need to hover over each address to check if it is valid. Rapportive is also a great email permutator.
Just because an email did not come up in Rapportive doesn’t mean that the email is wrong, it just means that that email isn’t registered with Linkedin!
2. Cobisi: Another impressive email validator is the Cobisi: I like Cobisi because they give quite a bit of information when doing a search. To know if the email is accurate, you want to check the last box on the screen. After doing 4 or 5 searches, you will need to answer a captcha.
I like that they give this information:
Five other options include:
- http://www.mailtester.com/testmail.php – Simple to use.
- http://www.verifyemailaddress.org/ – Simple, but seems effective.
- http://tools.email-checker.com/ – Very limited usage without paying.
- http://mailboxtools.com/tools/smtptest.aspx – Gives quite a few false positives.
- http://www.hq42.net/net_tools/test_email_addr.php – Limited to 10 uses per day.
Email validators frequently disappear, so its good to know all of the options available. If you want to understand what’s happening when you verify an email address, I found this blog by Amit Agarwal to be very informative. Are you using a different tool we should add to the list?