Guest Writer Jeremy Da Costa

There are 2 categories of tools out there. Email finding and People Aggregating. The difference is Email finding only finds emails and usually work. People aggregators find jail, as well as profile data and social sites.

Email finding tools are fairly numerous over 100. Some of the better ones include; Nymeria, Contactout, Lusha, Toofr, and Hunter. All have both free and paid versions, and all work on numerous sites to include; Linkedin, Github, Twitter, and others.

People Aggregators Are also fairly numerous, but within this category are 2 subcategories; Straight People Aggregators(SPA), and Database People Aggregators(DBPA). SPAs are what they say all they do is bring you aggregated info on the person you are looking at. Examples of these are; 360Social, Connectifier, and Prophet. DBPAs are tools that do aggregate info on people but also have a DB behind them and the capability to save profiles and download. Examples of these are; Hiretual, Seekout, and Whoknows. There are 100s of People aggregators out there

When looking at which tools to get and use, you need to take into consideration; cost, industry, accuracy, extras. While doing this though keep in mind that no 1 tool is 100%. No one tool will get every email, every phone, every profile.

Now the bully the elephant in the room, Linkedin. The reality is, for example, you can get Hiretual, Seekout, and Whoknows all together for less than 1 LIR license, and best of all have access to nearly everyone on Linkedin and so much more.