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Decision Makers

Finding the right person to contact at a company is often the difference between a successful business development conversation and a message that goes unanswered. Recruitier’s decision maker discovery helps you identify, rank, and reach the people who make hiring decisions at your target companies. Instead of guessing who to contact, you get an AI-ranked list of the most relevant people along with their LinkedIn profiles and personalized outreach messages.

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What Decision Maker Info Includes

For each discovered decision maker, Recruitier provides:
FieldDescription
NameThe person’s full name
Job TitleTheir current role at the company
LinkedIn URLDirect link to their LinkedIn profile for outreach and research
Relevance ScoreA three-tier relevance indicator (High, Medium, or Low) showing how relevant this person is for recruitment outreach
Role CategoryClassification of their role (HR/TA, Executive, Hiring Manager, etc.)
VerifiedWhether the person has been verified as actually working at the company

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Relevance Score Breakdown

Decision makers are scored using a three-tier relevance system based on their role and its relevance to recruitment business development:
ScoreLabelColorTypical RolesWhy They Are Relevant
1HighGreenHR Directors, Talent Acquisition Managers, Head of RecruitmentThese people directly manage the hiring process and decide which external recruiters to work with
2MediumYellowCEOs, CTOs, Founders, Managing DirectorsDecision makers who approve recruitment spend, budgets, and vendor partnerships
3LowRedDepartment Heads, Engineering Managers, Team Leads, Senior ContributorsHiring managers and senior staff who influence recruitment decisions but are not primary contacts
The scoring is performed by an AI model that evaluates each person’s role in the context of recruitment decision-making. The model considers job title, seniority level, department, and the company context to determine relevance. The top-ranked person is automatically marked as your primary (favorited) contact, though you can change this if you have established a relationship with a different person.

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How Decision Maker Data Is Sourced

Decision maker discovery works through a sophisticated multi-phase process:
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Trigger Discovery

From the company detail page, click the Find Contacts button to initiate employee discovery. This requires the company to have a LinkedIn URL on file — the LinkedIn URL is used as the starting point for the search.
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Phase 1: Google CSE Search

Recruitier runs two separate Google Custom Search Engine queries per company:
  • Executive search: Keywords targeting CEO, founder, director, and C-level roles, filtered to linkedin.com/in profiles
  • HR/Recruitment search: Keywords targeting HR managers, talent acquisition leads, and recruiter roles, also filtered to LinkedIn profiles
This two-pronged approach ensures you get both executive decision makers (who approve budgets) and operational hiring contacts (who manage the day-to-day recruitment process).
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Phase 2: Bright Data LinkedIn Verification

Each person discovered in Phase 1 is verified through Bright Data’s LinkedIn profile service. This step confirms that each person:
  • Actually exists as a LinkedIn profile
  • Is currently listed as working at the target company
  • Has the role and title originally discovered
This verification step eliminates false positives — people who appear in search results but are not actually at the company.
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AI Ranking

The verified employees are ranked by an AI model that evaluates each person’s relevance for recruitment business development. The model scores and ranks every employee, providing a relevance reason for each score.
5

Contacts Are Saved

The ranked contacts are saved as GlobalCompanyDecisionMaker records linked to the company. The top-ranked contact is automatically marked as your primary (favorited) contact.
6

Outreach Messages Are Generated

For each discovered contact, Recruitier can automatically generate a personalized outreach message based on the contact’s role, the company’s profile, their industry, and the company’s current job openings.

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Small vs. Large Company Strategies

Recruitier adapts its discovery strategy based on company size:

Small Companies (Under 10 Employees)

All employees are fetched and the AI ranks every person at the company. At small companies, even non-HR roles may be relevant because founders and senior team members often handle hiring directly. A CTO at a 5-person startup is likely the primary hiring decision maker for technical roles.

Large Companies (10+ Employees)

A targeted search is used to find people in HR, talent acquisition, management, and leadership roles. This is more efficient because large companies have many employees who are not relevant to recruitment outreach. The two-query approach (executive + HR) ensures comprehensive coverage of decision-making roles.

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Contact Caching

To save credits and avoid redundant API calls, Recruitier caches discovered contacts:
  • Cache duration — Contacts are cached for 30+ days in Redis.
  • Cost savings — If you trigger discovery on a company where contacts were already found recently, the cached results are returned at zero credit cost.
  • Fresh data — After the cache expires, triggering discovery again will fetch fresh data, which may include new employees, updated roles, or people who have left the company.
If contacts were discovered within the cache period, you will see a message indicating the results are cached. This is not a limitation — it means the data is still fresh and you are not being charged for the same information twice. The cache also means that if a colleague already discovered contacts at this company, you benefit immediately from their discovery.

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Using Decision Maker Info for Targeted Outreach

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Choosing Who to Contact

The relevance ranking helps you prioritize, but context matters:
  1. Start with High relevance contacts — These are typically people in HR or talent acquisition who directly manage external recruitment partnerships. They are most likely to respond to a recruitment pitch.
  2. Consider Medium relevance contacts as backup — If the primary contact does not respond, these are your next targets. Executives and founders often have final say on recruitment partnerships.
  3. Use Low relevance contacts strategically — A hiring manager (scored lower for general recruitment) might be the perfect contact if you have candidates specifically for their team. A department head might be ideal if you specialize in their function.
Do not contact all discovered people simultaneously. Start with #1, wait for a response (or lack thereof), then move to #2. Contacting multiple people at the same company at the same time can appear aggressive and unprofessional. A sequential approach with 5-7 day gaps between attempts is more effective.

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Crafting Your Message

Each contact has a relevance reason that explains why they were ranked at their level. Use this information to tailor your message:
  • For HR/TA contacts: Focus on how you can supplement their recruitment efforts, reduce their workload, and provide quality candidates. They understand recruitment language.
  • For C-level contacts: Focus on business value — reducing time-to-hire, accessing passive candidates, market insights, competitive salary data. They care about business outcomes, not recruitment processes.
  • For hiring managers: Focus on specific roles and candidate quality for their team. Reference the exact positions they have open and the kind of candidates you can deliver.

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Contact History

For tracked companies, the activity timeline records all outreach sent to each contact. This includes:
  • When messages were sent
  • Through which channel (email, LinkedIn)
  • Whether follow-ups were made
  • Response status
This history prevents you from accidentally contacting someone twice with the same message and helps you plan your follow-up cadence. It also provides accountability within your team.

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Email Statistics

When outreach has been sent to contacts at a company, Recruitier tracks engagement metrics where available. This can include:
  • Whether the message was delivered
  • Response status (responded / no response)
  • Follow-up reminders
These statistics help you evaluate which contacts are most responsive and adjust your outreach strategy accordingly.

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Managing Contacts

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Favoriting Contacts

You can mark any contact as a favorite. The top-ranked contact is automatically favorited, but you can change this if you have established a relationship with a different person at the company. Favorited contacts appear first in the contact list and are prominently displayed.

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Contact Sources

Each contact shows where the information came from:
SourceDescription
Company LinkedInDiscovered through LinkedIn company profile search
Job DescriptionContact info (email, phone) extracted from a job posting text
Company WebsiteContact info found on the company’s career or contact page
Self ProvidedManually entered by you or a colleague
Bright DataDiscovered and verified through Bright Data enrichment services

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Job Sources

For contacts that were discovered through specific job postings, the system tracks which jobs led to the contact being found. This is useful when a contact’s name or email appeared in a job description — you can reference that specific role in your outreach, creating a natural conversation opener.

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Credits and Cost

Employee discovery uses credits. The cost depends on the search type:
  • Cached results — Zero credits (contacts found within the cache period)
  • No results found — Zero credits (you are not charged if no employees are found)
  • Successful discovery — Standard credit cost as configured in your plan
Employee discovery requires the company to have a LinkedIn URL. If the company’s LinkedIn page is not on file or could not be found during enrichment, the discovery feature will not be available for that company. Most companies in the database have LinkedIn URLs through the enrichment process, but newly added companies may not have been enriched yet.

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Best Practices

  • Discover contacts early — Trigger employee discovery soon after tracking a company. Having contacts ready when you decide to reach out avoids delays and lets you move from research to outreach without friction.
  • Review the rankings critically — The AI ranking is a strong starting point, but apply your own judgment. A marketing director ranked lower might be the perfect contact if you place marketing professionals. The AI optimizes for general recruitment BD relevance.
  • Use the auto-generated messages as a starting point — They provide a solid foundation that you can personalize. Starting from a generated message is faster than writing from scratch, but always customize before sending.
  • Track all outreach — Log your outreach activities in Recruitier so the timeline stays complete and colleagues can see the full contact history.
  • Check freshness — If you are contacting someone months after discovery, verify their role has not changed by checking their LinkedIn profile directly. People change jobs frequently, and reaching out to someone who has left the company is wasted effort.
When reaching out to a decision maker, reference something specific about their company — a recent job posting, a hiring trend, or a specific role they posted. This demonstrates that you have done your research and makes your message stand out from generic recruitment pitches. The company detail page gives you all the data you need for a personalized first message.

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Advanced

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How the Two-Phase Discovery Process Works Under the Hood

The decision maker discovery is implemented through two sequential phases: Phase 1 — Google Custom Search Engine (CSE): Two queries are executed per company:
  1. site:linkedin.com/in "{company_name}" CEO OR founder OR director OR managing director
  2. site:linkedin.com/in "{company_name}" HR OR recruiter OR talent acquisition OR human resources
Each query returns LinkedIn profile URLs of potential contacts. The site:linkedin.com/in restriction ensures only personal LinkedIn profiles (not company pages or job posts) are returned. Phase 2 — Bright Data LinkedIn Profile Verification: Each URL from Phase 1 is sent to the Bright Data LinkedIn Profiles API. This API:
  • Fetches the full public profile data
  • Confirms the person’s current employer matches the target company
  • Returns the complete profile including name, title, location, and experience history
Only profiles that are verified as current employees of the target company are kept. This eliminates false positives from Phase 1.

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Data Model

Discovered contacts are stored as GlobalCompanyDecisionMaker records with:
  • global_company_id: Links to the GlobalCompany
  • full_name: Person’s full name
  • linkedin_url: Their LinkedIn profile URL (part of unique constraint)
  • title: Current job title
  • role_category: Classification (HR, Executive, Hiring Manager, etc.)
  • source: Discovery source (google_cse, bright_data)
  • verified: Boolean flag indicating Bright Data verification
  • profile_data: Full JSONB profile data from Bright Data
A unique constraint on (global_company_id, linkedin_url) prevents duplicate contacts. If the same person is found through both queries, only one record is stored.

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3-Level Contact Aggregation and Deduplication

The company detail page aggregates contacts from three levels:
  1. Level 1 (Company-specific): Contacts you or your team manually added to this specific company. These are the most authoritative.
  2. Level 2 (GlobalCompany): Contacts discovered through the decision maker discovery process (GlobalCompanyDecisionMaker records). These are shared across all users tracking the same company.
  3. Level 3 (Job-level): Contact information extracted from individual job descriptions (emails, phone numbers found in the description text).
Deduplication works on (contact_type, value) tuples:
  • If the same email jan@company.nl appears in a job description (Level 3) and was also manually added (Level 1), it shows once.
  • If the same LinkedIn URL appears from both a Google CSE result and a job description, it shows once.
The display priority is Level 1 > Level 2 > Level 3, meaning the most specific source attribution is shown.

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Connection to Other Features

  • Company Detail Page: Decision makers are displayed in a dedicated section alongside contacts from other sources.
  • Auto-Generated Outreach: Once contacts are discovered, the outreach generation uses the contact’s name, title, and the company’s job data to create personalized messages.
  • Activity Timeline: When contacts are discovered, a contact_detail_added activity can be logged. Outreach sent to contacts appears in the timeline.
  • Redis Caching: Discovery results are cached in Redis with a 30+ day TTL, reducing API costs for repeat discoveries.

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Power User Tips

  • Trigger discovery on your top 10 prospects in batch: After a prospecting session, go through your highest-priority new Prospects and trigger discovery on each. By the time you are ready to reach out, all contacts will be cached and ready.
  • Cross-reference with the company’s current job postings: If a company is posting a “Head of HR” role, their current HR leadership may be in transition. Adjust your contact strategy accordingly.
  • Use role_category for segmented outreach: If you are reaching out to 20 companies, consider separate messaging tracks — one for HR/TA contacts and another for C-level executives. The role_category field makes this segmentation easy.
  • Small company discovery is more valuable per credit: At a 5-person startup, discovering all employees gives you the complete decision-making structure. At a 5,000-person company, you get a selected subset. Consider prioritizing discovery credits for smaller targets where the results are most comprehensive.
  • Verify before outreach on older data: If contacts were discovered more than 2-3 months ago, click through to their LinkedIn profile before sending outreach. Job titles and employers change frequently.

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Business Logic Rules

  • Discovery requires a LinkedIn URL on the GlobalCompany record.
  • The unique constraint (global_company_id, linkedin_url) prevents duplicate contacts.
  • Phase 2 verification filters out people who no longer work at the company.
  • Small companies (under 10 employees) use a different search strategy than larger companies.
  • The top-ranked contact is automatically favorited as the primary contact.
  • Cached results are served from Redis for 30+ days at zero credit cost.
  • The AI ranking model assigns a three-tier relevance score (1=High, 2=Medium, 3=Low) based on job title, seniority, department, and company context.