Fun with Finding Phone Numbers: Creativity Sometimes a Must when Names Sourcing

Another short but hopefully sweet posting.

Sometimes using the typical sources to find phone numbers just will not work.  Even great tools such as Argali can’t do it all.  Or, sometimes they can’t do it all, but can provide clues.

For example…I sourced quite a few names via LinkedIn the other day for a particularly challenging search.  The specs on this one are very tight and the client very picky.  It’s safe to say that the number of people in this world with this particular experience is very low.  For this reason, talking to everyone that remotely fits the specs is important.

After review of the list of names I found, my co worker asked for phone numbers.  Most were pretty easy to find.  But, two of the names no longer worked for large companies with a good public presence.  One now consulted on his own (in a very new start up) and the other had been out of the industry for some time and had done everything from writing to blogging to self help consulting. 

The company name for the consultant was too new to have a good public presence.  Searching on the name provided no clues as to how to contact the owner.  All I had was a personal name and company name.  In fact, he didn’t even provide a link to his website from his LinkedIn profile and didn’t appear to have a site at all.  But wait, a clue.  As a registered LLC, I knew that information on this company legally had to be provided in the state he registered the name in.  This typically is with the Secretary of State which are typically deep web resources (those sources on the web that are not crawled or allowed to be crawled by the search engines but which can be searchable via the site itself).  So, in other words, you will not find information from these gold mines unless you visit the site.  Long story short…yes, it was registered, and yes, there was personal information there.  I found his home address, which was then used to find a phone #. 

To find contact information for the other individual who had been out of the industry for a while also called for some digging.  She of course was unlisted, and, the web address she gave via her LinkedIn profile led to an expired parking page.  Her twitter profile also left no clues.  I suppose I could have DMd her, but I needed the number that day and not later.  So, I went to one of the main meta people search engines (to be unnamed) and put in her name and location.  You have to weed through these sites, but I did eventually find a link to her Google profile (which curiously did not come up with a search on her name – hum).  It was here that she listed her most recent endeavor, a coffee shop!  I then did a search on that name and found a Yelp listing that did provide contact information.  In addition, a few of the reviews were recent so I knew this business was still alive.  A simple call for the owner will finally get us in touch with her.

So, yes, the traditional number finding resources do often work.  But, other times there simply may not be enough public facing information to find a phone number or email address for an individual.  Don’t give up though.  Look for clues and keep in mind that the non-traditional resources (many which may be deep web resources) may be the best way to find out how to get in touch with key leads.