What if I told you I have a tool that could allow you to instant message candidates just by knowing their work email address? Pretty cool, huh? Now imagine that same tool could allow you to see a candidate’s current calendar availability so that you could email them right when they get out of a meeting. Do I have your attention yet? But wait, there’s more. This same tool can also call that candidate without even knowing their phone number and best of all: you may already be using this tool at work. Dropping the cheesy shamwow sales routine for a minute, what tool am I talking about? Microsoft Lync.
What is Lync?
Lync is an enterprise instant messaging, voice, and video conferencing software that’s deployed at thousands of companies around the globe. It’s most often used for intra-company messaging. However, few realize that it can also be used to message Lync users at other companies simply by entering their email address. (There’s some other technical caveats here and a few dozen knowledge base articles I could point you to for further explanation – but let’s get to the good stuff.)
For example, I’ll try to contact Randy Bailey, {Sourcer Extradanaire} at Pepsico. I’ve entered in Randy’s email address into the lync contact bar and his profile appears below.
After I double click on his email address, the profile resolves and I now can see his status (Available, Busy, In a Call, In a Meeting, Out of the Office, etc.) along with his current title. From here, I can choose to send him an instant message or call through Lync.
Now that I’ve added Randy’s email address in Lync, his status carries over to Outlook as well. As I prepare to send Randy an email, it recognizes his email address and shows me his Lync status. Seems to me the best time to call/email him would be when his calendar is free. 🙂
How can you figure out which companies use Lync so you can chat up their employees?
There are a few publicly available company (Lync customer) lists on the web. My favorites are the Lync Directory and this Federated Lync Customer sheet. These lists are searchable and in some cases provide you with the correct email address scheme to use.
This doesn’t work in all cases, but when it does it’s magical!
Happy Hunting!