How to Send an Email to Someone When you do not Know their Email Address

Author: David Schuchman
              Information Technology Manager of Projects and Teams

 

Sometimes you need to send an email to someone, but you may not know their exact professional email address. You may need to contact that person to follow up after a business discussion, to thank them for an interview, or even to establish a new relationship. It can be a challenge to send an email to someone when you do not know his/her exact professional email address. Here are some tips for overcoming this challenge.

Ask Others

The first thing to do is to contact people that have a relationship with the person to which you want to send the email. That could be former and current coworkers of the person you would like to contact. Ask those people for the exact email address. If they do not know, ask if they know the format that the organization uses for their employee’s email.

Search the Web & Social Media

The next thing to do is to search the web for the person using a search engine. Google and Bing are good search engines to use for finding someone. In addition, search common social media sites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, to see if the recipient has openly posted an email address. You can also search for someone via a fee-based search sites like Spokeo (http://www.spokeo.com). Also, search for other people that may work with that person to see if you can find their email addresses. If so, then you will uncover the format of the email address for the person you are actually looking for.

Figure it Out

If you still cannot find the person’s email address, you will likely know the most common information about the person, which you can apply to the email address. For example, you will likely know their name and company. With that, you have what you need to get started.

Search the internet for the company where the recipient works. That will enable you to learn the “domain” portion (e.g. “@companyname.com”) of the email address. The company URL (e.g.“http://www.companyname.com“) will often equate to the email “domain” portion. If you cannot determine the exact company name, but find variations, then jot those down. Also, include the best known ISPs that offer email (Google, Yahoo, etc.). The maximum length of the “domain” part is 255 characters.

Once you know the domain, use a website like https://www.email-format.com/ to determine the email address format(s) used at the company. Some companies have more than one email address format. In these websites, enter the company’s domain in a search field. That will return the email address format(s) used at the company.

Create a List of Possibilities

If you still do not know the email address format, then mix and match all of the “local” and “domain” part words you found and created into a group of email addresses. This group can be as large or small as you would like. If you were searching for “Mary Smith” who works for the “Very Big” company, you may create email a list of email addresses that look like this:

msmith@verybig.com	msmith@verybigcorp.com	msmith@verybiginc.com
mary.smith@verybig.com	mary.smith@verybigcorp.com	mary.smith@verybiginc.com
smith.mary@verybig.com	smith.mary@verybigcorp.com	smith.mary@verybiginc.com
marysmith@google.com	marysmith@yahoo.com	marysmith@hotmail.com

 

The last step is to pick one email address from the group you created. Pick anyone, it does not matter. The one you pick is the email address you will place in the “TO:” field of your email message. Then, copy all of the other email addresses from your group to the “BCC:” (Blind Carbon Copy) field. The result of doing this will be that the recipient will likely receive the email, but only see the one email address in the “TO:” field. The recipient never sees the “BCC” field. So s/he will never know you placed many more email addresses in the “BCC:” field. The secondary benefit is that you will likely receive “undeliverable” email messages for all of the invalid email address. The email address for the one you did not receive an “undeliverable” email message is the actual email address. Voilà!

Summer Fun! Tweet! Tweet!

Author:  Richard Pawlak (@esterrick on Twitter)
               Journalist and public relations professional, and
               volunteers as chair of PSG’s Public Relations Committee

Summer is here. Imagine yourself relaxing poolside in some summery place, enjoying a tall, cold glass of something delicious, while your vigorous job search continues on your nearby laptop, smartphone, or iPad. Just a summer fantasy? Not at all. 

Even though networking through social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn has become an important part of everyone’s career strategy, don’t leave the wildly popular Twitter out of your job search arsenal. With just a little legwork to set up some Twitter add-ons and companion services, you can propel your job-hunting efforts to the next level and still enjoy the sun, the sand, the surf, and some summertime sanity along with your nicely developing tan. 

If you’re not already using Twitter, it’s pretty easy to install on your computer, iPhone, iPad, Android, or BlackBerry mobile device. Then the job hunt fun begins when you check out TweetMyJOBS.com, a companion web site that harnesses the vast reach of Twitter to search jobs for you. There you can create multiple search channels by job type and location, and you can schedule daily, weekly, or monthly e-mail alerts. TweetMyJOBS.com’s search engines are pretty robust, too, and seem to be able to uncover job opportunities that aren’t posted on the more popular job search sites such as Monster, Dice, and CareerBuilder.

Other helpful Twitter companions are two dashboard programs that display your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media program activity all on one handy screen for at-a-glance convenience. TweetDeck.com and HootSuite.com are Web sites worth visiting to download and install one of those dashboard programs on your computer and mobile device. Such dashboard programs really showcase the amazing aggregate power of social media in the 21st century.

On TweetDeck, for example, you can create a column to search for particular jobs or job titles by using a hash tag (#) as your guide. By selecting the Create a Column tab on the screen, you can type “#Project Manager Jobs” and create a column that will search the Internet around the clock for that job title. Varying the job title to, say, “#Program Manager Jobs” can produce an entirely new set of search results in a separate column on TweetDeck. Depending on how you’ve branded yourself on your résumé, you could conceivably create several more column searches on TweetDeck, thereby unearthing jobs you may never have found elsewhere. If you’re open to relocation across the U.S. and overseas, you can watch the job search results from across the country and around the world accumulate in your TweetDeck search columns in real time, 24 hours a day. It can be an eye-opening—and entertaining—experience!

Becoming active on Twitter also has other benefits. You may find it fascinating to follow pro athletes, politicians, radio/TV talk show hosts (Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien and Craig Ferguson are consistently funny and David Letterman has just begun some sort of hashtag promotion on his show), restaurants, celebrities, and bloggers (our own alumnus Ed Han posts valuable information every day). Virtually every day, companies open Twitter accounts to promote their brands, products, and events; and they can give you valuable insight into their company cultures and work environments as well as their current career opportunities.

More importantly, having a personal or professional Twitter account also gives you the chance to promote yourself and your own job search on several levels. Crafting your personal brand statement into Twitter’s 140-character limit can help you self-edit and even redefine your own job search goals.

Alison Doyle (@AlisonDoyle on Twitter), writing for About.com, got the following Twitter job-hunting tips straight from Gary Zukowski, CEO and founder of TweetMyJOBS.com:

• Put your elevator pitch in your bio.

• Use a professional avatar.

• Have a custom background that gives more detail about your qualifications.

• Have a link to your online résumé. Tools like VisualCV can help.

• Follow industry experts in your industry on Twitter. Tools like Twellow.com can help.

• Establish yourself as an expert in your industry. Use your status updates to tweet about industry topics, offer tips, and provide advice.

• You don’t have to create all of the content. You just need to be viewed as someone in the know.

• Get targeted job tweets sent to your Twitter feed or mobile phone.

• Be consistent on image throughout all of your online platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

Tweeting about your transition might actually help you vent some frustration and reduce unnecessary stress in your life (but do avoid angry rants and personal attacks). Like other types of networking, becoming a part of a group of people who share a common experience, similar to what we enjoy as members of PSG, can offer encouragement, guidance, tips, and, often, much-needed good humor during a difficult time in life. Twitter is a tremendous resource for all of those networking benefits.

And if that can help you enjoy even a few more sunny days with family and friends this summer, or dig your toes a little deeper into that Long Beach Island sand, or even relax poolside for a few extra minutes, it’s time for you to start tweeting!