How to Find a Candidate's Cell Phone Number

Posted by Jonathan Kidder on February 5, 2020January 28, 2023

Tracking down a candidate’s phone number can be quite a task, but if you’re convinced they’re going to be a good fit, it’s definitely worth putting in the effort to locate their most recent contact information. Fortunately, there are many modern tools that can help you do just that. Here are a few different methods you can use to locate a candidate’s number quickly.

1. Use a People Search Engine Tool

A people finder tool is certainly one of the most efficient ways for locating all sorts of information about a candidate, including their full name, address, job history, and more. Most people search websites will enable you to search with whatever information you already know. You can find phone numbers with names, emails, and/or addresses or you can figure out who owns a number by doing a reverse lookup.

FamilyTreeNow, ZabaSearch, Peekyou, and TruePeopleSearch are all free options for doing this. Spokeo, BeenVerified, TruthFinder, Radaris, and Pipl Pro are paid options that offer lots of personal details if you’re trying to do a more in-depth search of a candidate. Overall, I’ve had the best success with Pipl Pro search and the the accuracy level is around 70-80%. I’ve added all my search engine tool suggestions on my tools page here.

2. Check Social Media Profiles

Many people do share their phone numbers across social networks, with Facebook being one of the first places you should check. To figure out if your candidate’s phone number is available on a social network, start by typing their name into the search box and see what comes up.

You might have to connect with them before viewing such details, but many people still have public profiles. It’s always worth a quick check on major social networks since this method is completely free anyway. I’ve had a lot of success with adding candidates on my recruiter Facebook profile. Majority of public profiles have a cell number listed within there general tab.

3. Use a Search Engine

If you know someone’s number, you can use a simple Google search (or any other search engine) to find if it is tied to any blog, website, public profile, or other data online. This allows you to find even more information about a candidate. You can use this method for cell numbers and landlines.

Additionally, you can use a Google search to find a company number (just search: “800 number” <company name>) or to find the number of a specific professional or organization (just search: “contact” XYZ).

Here’s a Boolean string example to find a cell number:

(email OR mailto OR contact OR phone) * companyname.com “persons name”

(intitle:resume OR intitle:cv) “Software Engineer” “Los Angeles” (310 OR 424) -job -jobs -sample -templates

4. Try a Cell Phone Number Lookup Sites

If search engines yield no results, you can use a site dedicated to looking up cell phone numbers. Try TruePeopleSearch, Spy Dialer, ZLOOKUP, USPhonebook, or ReversePhoneCheck.

All of these platforms can find a name associated with a number. Plus, they can locate a person’s number with just their name given that the information is available in some directory online.

5. Search Social Media Usernames

Social media information can be a good starting point, even if you can’t locate a candidate’s number directly on one of their social profiles. For example, many people use the same usernames across networks. So, you could potentially use their twitter handle to find them on other platforms, one of which may list their contact information. I love using the tool namechk to cross reference all the social media profiles at once.

Here’s additional username search tools:

Gramuser.com
Checkusernames.com
Instantusername.com
Peekyou.com
Namecheckup.com

Ultimately, knowing the right tools and strategies to use is all it takes to reach your best potential candidates. Start with these methods and see what you turn up.

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Jonathan Kidder

With more than 12 years of recruitment experience, Jonathan has helped startups and small businesses find the talent they need. He runs the blog WizardSourcer, which explores the latest trends in talent sourcing, provides reviews of recruitment tools, and features interviews with prominent figures in the industry.