You know how it goes; just as every software engineer has a preferred language, or every photographer a favorite camera, every recruiter has a preferred set of tools. From Indeed and Dice to CareerBuilder and LinkedIn, we’ve all been guilty of favoring that which is familiar and easy.

But five years in recruiting has taught me an important lesson – it’s taught me to diversify. Diversify candidate pools, job boards, and – perhaps most importantly – the type of software I rely on to make connections.

On my own, I’m just one guy trying to connect with thousands of professionals, many of whom are not interested in my advances. But with these tools, every InMail I send or phone call I make is informed by an army of data-driven technology.

These are the tools I wish I knew about when starting out as a recruiter:

1. Connectifier Social Links

This tool changed my whole recruiting process. With it, you can easily piece together your candidate’s digital persona. Just download the Chrome extension, input a name, and quickly collect the person’s social links, including Facebook, Twitter, and Github.

The benefits of Connectifier are twofold:

1. Increase your InMail and email open-rates by personalizing your messages using the information you learn from social media.

2. Make your life easier when it’s time to screen a candidate by gathering all their social media links in one place.

While Connectifier Social Links is entirely free, the full product (Connectifier) costs upwards of $500/month. For this price, you’ll get a more in-depth, 360 view of the candidate including all available contact information.

2. Github

Looking for a tech professional’s email? Github is a great place to start your search. Similar to how designers have portfolios, coders have Github – an accessible platform optimized to share code. You can find someone’s Github username through Connectifier Social Links (see above).

Once you have the candidate’s Github username, enter it into the following url in lieu of ‘username.’

URL:  https://api.github.com/users/username/events/public. You can then search for the person’s email by hitting Ctrl+F and typing the word ‘email.’

3. Wappalyzer

Wappalyzer gives you the power to identify the languages used to build any website. Applied to BD, this tool is priceless; with it, you have the inside track on what languages and technologies your target companies are currently using (and for which they’ll likely need to hire!).

If you want to compare similar softwares, you can give Builtwith a shot as well – it’s another free tool with comparable capabilities. I’d love to hear which one you prefer!

4. Hunter

Simply enter a company’s website and watch as Hunter pulls up a directory of all the employees in the system. Hunter also makes available the most common company-wide email format (ie, first.lastname@company.com).

If you’re looking for a specific email, run a search for a person’s name and company domain (i.e., provenrecruiting.com) and Hunter will generate their email.

Hunter comes with 100 free searches/month.

5. Mailtester

This one’s for all the Full Desk recruiters – especially those focused on BD. Mailtester allows you to try different email addresses to ‘test’ which ones are correct.

Want to approach a potential client, but can’t access their work email? Just guess an email (‘name.lastname@company.com’) and watch as Mailtester either turns green or red depending on if the email you’ve entered is right. Once you’ve established the formatting, you can use it to contact other employees at the same company.

6. ContactOut

This is where I go when I’ve exhausted all other options and desperately need someone’s email. Essentially, ContactOut is a Chrome extension with access to ~60% of all LinkedIn users’ profile information.

If you verify your account, you’ll be given 50 credits a day until the expiration of your free trial. Each credit will give you access to the information on any one LinkedIn profile (personal email, phone number, etc.).

After the free trial ends, you can expect a significant price jump.

I cannot overemphasize the value of these tools. Everyone knows about the industry leaders – LinkedIn Recruiter, CareerBuilder, Dice – but it’s the smaller players than make all the difference. Rather than sending impersonal InMails, I can use Hunter, Github, and Connectifier Social Links to identify emails and personalize messages. Instead of endless LinkedIn searches, I can use Mailtester and Wappalyzer to hone in on new clients.

You need to embrace any technology that will differentiate your approach from that of your competitors. Don’t miss the opportunity.

The possibilities are endless – and the tools are, amazingly, free. Get in touch to chat about strategy, pros and cons of various softwares, and your career options.