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Industry · HR tech

Personal email API for HR tech

Reach people off the work inbox.

What HR tech teams need from personal emails, what Forager returns, and how teams like yours test it.

9 recipes use personal emails for HR tech teams.

  • $5 free credits
  • 800M+ people
  • 65M+ companies

A selection of teams in HR tech using Forager for personal emails · plus other teams using personal emails

  • Clay
  • Juicebox
  • Intro
  • Pin.com
  • skillconomy
  • Leelu
  • kiluz
  • Jolly
For HR tech teams
The job
Let recruiters contact a shortlisted candidate immediately with a personal email or mobile shown on the card.
When
An AI sourcing search returns a shortlist and a recruiter opens a candidate.
Outcome
Recruiters move from shortlist to first contact within the hour and hire faster.
Lead recipe 1

Show verified contact details on every AI-sourced candidate card

When to use it: An AI sourcing search returns a shortlist and a recruiter opens a candidate.

  1. Resolve the candidate with POST /person_detail_lookup/ (linkedin_public_identifier)
  2. Fetch personal_email (preferred for passive candidates), then mobile and work_email
  3. Display channels on the card with reveal credits
  4. Log sends and replies to improve channel order
InputsOutputs
candidate LinkedIn identifierpersonal_email
phone_number
work_email
current role
Lead recipe 2

Replace InMail with email-first outreach to passive engineers

When to use it: A recruiter builds a shortlist of passive engineers for a hard-to-fill role.

Show the steps
  1. Resolve each candidate with POST /person_detail_lookup/
  2. Fetch personal_email via /person_contacts_lookup/personal_emails/
  3. Send a personalised email sequence from the recruiting platform
  4. Compare reply rate against InMail on the same role
InputsOutputs
candidate LinkedIn identifierspersonal_email
role briefcurrent employer
sequence status
Open the recipe: Replace InMail with email-first outreach to passive engineers
Lead recipe 3

Refresh stale ATS candidate records so past applicants resurface

When to use it: An agency imports its historic talent pool or a new requisition opens.

Show the steps
  1. Match ATS records by email with POST /person_detail_reverse_lookup/by_email/ or by LinkedIn identifier
  2. Update current role_title, employer and skills from POST /person_detail_lookup/
  3. Refresh personal_email and mobile
  4. Re-index so silver-medalist candidates appear in new searches
InputsOutputs
ATS export (name, email, LinkedIn URL)current role_title
current employer
personal_email
phone_number
Open the recipe: Refresh stale ATS candidate records so past applicants resurface
Fields

Fields you get back

  • personal_email
  • phone_number
  • work_email
  • current role
  • current employer
  • sequence status
  • current role_title

From the workflows above. Full field reference: Personal emails and the Personal emails API reference.

Who owns this

Who evaluates personal emails at HR tech teams, and what they are judged on

  • Product manager who owns the enrichment feature: judged on what users see when they open a record
  • Engineering lead integrating the API: judged on response time and errors they can route on
  • Partnerships or data lead managing vendors: judged on cost per valid result

A selection of teams in HR tech using Forager for personal emails · plus other teams using personal emails

  • Clay
    • GTM workflow builders

    Selected use case: Forager mobile numbers, emails and people data inside Clay tables.

  • Juicebox
    • AI candidate sourcing

    Selected use case: Forager data behind its PeopleGPT search and sourcing agents.

  • Intro
    • AI candidate sourcing

    Selected use case: phone numbers for outreach to passive candidates.

  • Pin.com
    • AI candidate sourcing

    AI recruiting platform that sources candidates and runs multi-channel outreach for recruiters.

  • skillconomy
    • AI candidate sourcing

    AI active-sourcing service for professional and leadership roles.

  • Leelu
    • AI candidate sourcing

    Team behind the Leelu AI recruiting copilot.

  • kiluz
    • Internal use

    Career-coaching provider in France.

  • Jolly
    • Internal use

    Incentive platform for frontline and deskless teams.

“We use Forager to enrich our contact data with email addresses and mobile phone numbers. After analyzing all the data providers we use, we found Forager to deliver the best overall data quality.”
AndelaRyley L.Growth Marketing Associate
800M+people
65M+companies
How to test it

Test personal emails on your own sample

  1. Pull a sample. Take profiles your users looked up last week.
  2. Run it. Use a self-serve key, or book a demo and send us the list.
  3. Measure what your users feel. Connect rate for mobiles, bounces for emails, and whether the right person answers.
  • $5 free credits
  • No credit card
  • Pay per result
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do HR tech companies use Forager personal emails?

Let recruiters contact a shortlisted candidate immediately with a personal email or mobile shown on the card. Personal email addresses for reaching people outside their work inbox, such as passive candidates and founders. This page walks through 3 workflows with the exact steps.

What do personal emails cost for HR tech companies?

Personal emails: 5 credits per personal email found, and a personal email lookup that finds nothing costs 0 credits. That is $0.07 per personal email on Starter month to month and $0.05 on Pro with yearly billing. Self-serve plans are Starter, Growth, Pro and Scale. See plans and prices

Which HR tech workflows use personal emails?

Show verified contact details on every AI-sourced candidate card, replace InMail with email-first outreach to passive engineers and refresh stale ATS candidate records so past applicants resurface. Each is on this page with its trigger, steps and outcome.

How AI recruiting tools find candidate emails?

Resolve the candidate with POST /person_detail_lookup/ (linkedin_public_identifier). Fetch personal_email (preferred for passive candidates), then mobile and work_email.

What do I send, and what comes back?

You send candidate profile URL, ATS export (name, email, LinkedIn URL) and candidate LinkedIn identifier. You get back personal_email, phone_number, current employer and personal email, as JSON.

Am I charged when no personal email is found?

No. A personal email lookup that finds nothing costs 0 credits, so you pay for personal emails we find. Search, enrichment and reverse lookups are the exception: they are charged per request.

Is there a free way to try Forager?

Yes. Create a free account at app.forager.ai: it comes with $5 in free credits and an API key, and there is no credit card to sign up. Run it on records you already know, or book a demo and send us a list: we run it and show you what we find.

How do I find personal email of passive candidates?

Fetch personal_email via /person_contacts_lookup/personal_emails/. Send a personalised email sequence from the recruiting platform.

How do I know the data is right?

The test that counts is your own: send a list of profiles you care about. We run it and show you what we find, number by number, so you can measure hit rate and connect rate yourself.

When should I use a personal email instead of a work email?

Use a personal email when the person may not read, or may not stay at, their work inbox: passive candidates, founders, alumni and people between jobs. Use a work email for business outreach to someone at their current employer. Forager prices both the same: email lookups are charged only when an address is found.

Does Forager integrate with the tools we already use?

Native in Clay and Zapier, partner-built in Deepline and called through the API from Make, n8n and your own code. Everything else connects through the REST API with one API key.

Is there a contract or minimum commitment?

No contract to start: a free account comes with $5 in credits. To keep using personal emails, choose a monthly or yearly plan. Monthly plans cancel anytime and unused credits roll over; yearly plans grant all credits upfront and cost 10% less. Larger volumes are agreed with our team.

More

More recipes

Start building

Put people, company and job data your users can act on inside your product

Send us a list. We run it, show you what we find, then talk volume and terms.

  • $5 free credits
  • No credit card
  • Run your sample
Platforms and teams that build on Forager
  • Clay
  • Juicebox
  • Nooks
  • Andela
  • HubSpot
  • SeekOut