Finding a candidate's phone number or email:
methods, tools and GDPR

To find a candidate's phone number or email, start with your own database and their profile, then try manual methods (network, company switchboard, work email format) and, if needed, an enrichment tool. The GDPR allows it for recruitment, provided you inform the candidate at the first contact, and at the latest within a month.

Here are the methods in the order a recruiter tries them, what enrichment tools are worth, and the rules to follow.

Article checked on 11 November 2026. Sources: the CNIL recruitment guide (published 30 January 2023, in French) and GDPR, Article 14.

Start with your database and the candidate's profile

The first place to look for a number is your own database. A candidate you spot today may have applied to another role, been referred by a colleague or exchanged messages with someone in your team. Their record then holds a CV, a phone number and a history. Next comes their LinkedIn profile, where some people publish their contact details.

On LinkedIn, the "Contact info" section of a profile shows what the person chose to make visible: often a website, sometimes an email, rarely a phone number. It shows more when you are a direct connection.

Two quick checks before going further:

• The CV attached to an old application. Contact details there are more reliable than data found by a tool, since the candidate provided them.
• Other professional presences. A developer sometimes publishes an email on their code repository, a consultant on their firm's website. The CNIL recommends sticking to professional sources (sheet no. 14 of its guide).

Manual methods that still work

Without a paid tool, three methods often lead to a first contact: going through someone in your network who knows the candidate, calling their company's switchboard, or working out their work email from the format the company uses. They take time, but they cost nothing.

Your network. A former candidate placed at the same company, a client, a consultant in your team: a referral opens the conversation better than a cold message.

The switchboard. For an in-house role, reception sometimes puts the call through. Introduce yourself plainly, without stating the purpose in front of a colleague of the candidate: discretion matters for someone who asked for nothing.

The work email format. Most companies use a fixed pattern: firstname.lastname@company.com, f.lastname@, firstname@. You can infer it from an address the company has published (press, job ads, website). Writing to a candidate's work address calls for tact: their employer can read it.

To prepare the first message once you have the address, see our method for the candidate outreach message.

Enrichment tools: what they do and what they are worth

An enrichment tool takes a name, a company or a LinkedIn URL and looks in its databases for a work email, a personal email or a mobile number. It usually runs as a browser extension or an integration with your software, and is paid per credit, per contact found or by subscription.

What to know before choosing one:

• The hit rate varies by country, occupation and type of data. A work email is found more often than a personal mobile. Test on twenty or so profiles from your own roles before committing.
• Check what gets charged. Some tools bill the search, others only the contact found.
• Ask where the data comes from. A serious provider documents its sources and GDPR compliance, and can handle an objection request.
• An email found is not necessarily valid. Good tools verify the address before delivering it.

Kaspr, Lusha, FullEnrich, Surfe and Dropcontact are among these providers. Their pricing and databases change often: compare them on your own profiles.

What the GDPR says: legal basis, information, retention

Searching for and recording a candidate's contact details is processing of personal data. The GDPR allows it for recruitment, on the basis of the recruiter's legitimate interest, under three conditions: the data serves to assess or contact the candidate, they are informed in time, and they can easily object.

The legal basis. The CNIL recruitment guide (sheet no. 4) lists searching for profiles and building a talent pool among the processing that can rest on legitimate interest or on consent. The candidate keeps a right to object (GDPR Article 21): if they no longer want to be contacted, their request applies without them having to justify it.

The sources. The French Labour Code (Article L. 1221-6) limits the information sought to what serves to assess the candidate's ability to do the job. The CNIL draws a recommendation from it: consult professional networks and sites, and avoid personal networks as a rule (sheet no. 14).

Informing the candidate. Contact details found without going through the candidate are an indirect collection. GDPR Article 14 requires informing them within a reasonable period, at most one month after collection, and at the latest at the first communication if the data is used to contact them. The CNIL puts it as "as soon as possible (in particular at the first contact with the candidate)" (sheet no. 8). In practice, the first message or call says who you are, where the information came from and how they can ask for it to be deleted.

Retention. The CNIL recommends not keeping a candidate's data more than two years after the last contact (sheet no. 9). After that, delete the record or ask the candidate whether they want to stay in your talent pool.

Where to store contact details so you never look for them twice

A contact detail you find belongs on the candidate's record, with its source and date, where the whole team will see it. Kept in a personal spreadsheet or an inbox, it will be looked for again by a colleague, paid for twice if an enrichment tool provided it, and forgotten when a deletion request arrives.

Three habits are enough:

1. One record per person, deduplicated, whether the detail came from a CV, a tool or a conversation.
2. The source noted ("2024 CV", "enrichment tool", "given by phone"), useful to answer a candidate who asks where their number came from.
3. The date of the last contact, which drives the retention period.

This is the step that links finding contact details to the rest of sourcing in recruitment: a well-kept talent pool saves you paying again for what you already have.

In Marvin

In Marvin, AI sourcing searches your talent pool first, then the LinkedIn profiles your agency has already retrieved, then, with your LinkedIn account connected, live on LinkedIn. If the candidate is already with you, their record opens with their contact details and history.

Email and phone come from a separate enrichment that you run on a profile when you need it. It is paid in credits: one credit for an email, ten for a phone number, with 250 credits included per user each month on Pro and 500 on Suite. You can also connect your own Kaspr, FullEnrich or Surfe account. Contact details are revealed when you ask for them, never automatically, and are added to the candidate's record.

With the Chrome extension, a LinkedIn profile becomes a candidate record in your talent pool, from which you then run the enrichment or a sequence.

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