Find People overview

Discover relevant contacts matching your criteria within Clay's database.

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Overview

The Find People Search tool helps you find people based on criteria like job title, company, location, and experience.

How to Use the Find People Search

Step 1: Define Your Search Parameters

Choose your starting method (Search query or External list) and set filters like company, job title, experience, and other relevant criteria.

Step 2: Limit Results

Set an overall record limit and a per-company limit to control the number of results and manage credit usage, especially for tables with auto-update.

Step 3: Run Search and Check Results

Click Preview People to view search results. Review the data quality and adjust filters if needed.

Step 4: Import Results

Import the final results into an existing or new table in Clay. For existing tables with auto-update, be mindful of ongoing credit usage.

Search Parameters

Method

The Method section allows users to start their prospecting process by either:

  • Building a search query directly in Clay
  • Importing an external list of prospects.

Companies

The Companies section lets you choose specific companies to find people from. You can either pick a list of companies saved in a Clay Table or upload a Comma-Separated List of company names. This helps you focus on finding contacts within the companies you’re interested in. However, please note that not all companies may have the contacts you’re looking for.

Company attributes

The Company Attributes section lets you narrow down companies based on specific details. You are able to:

  • Include or exclude keywords in their descriptions
  • Choose company sizes
  • Filter by industries to focus your search.

This helps you find companies that match your ideal profile more accurately.

Exclude people

The Exclude People section lets you remove profiles that appear in other Clay tables.

Select a table containing a previous people search to avoid duplicate profiles in your current search results.

Job title

The Job Title section lets you refine your search by:

  • Specifying job levels, functions, and titles to include or exclude
  • Including past experiences to include or exclude
  • Enabling exact keyword matching

Experience

The Experience section lets you filter profiles based on:

  • Time in their current role by months
  • Minimum number of past experiences
  • Keyword similarities
  • Note: The default will treat SWE and Software Engineer as the same titles. If you enable Exact keyword match, the Find People search will only return exact match (ex. “Software Engineer” returns only “Software Engineer” and not “SWE”)

Bio

The Bio section allows you to filter profiles based on keywords found in a person’s headline or About section.

Location

The Location section lets you filter profiles based on geographic criteria. You can include or exclude:

  • Specific countries
  • Regions
  • Cities
  • States

The Search raw location field option gives more flexibility by searching unstructured location data.

Profile

The Profile section allows you to find profiles with a certain level of network reach or specific individuals. You can refine your search by:

  • Specifying person names
  • Minimum connections or followers

Certification

The Certification section lets you filter profiles based on specific keywords in certifications, helping you find people with qualifications like Salesforce, Hubspot, or AWS.

If you need to search for multiple certifications, separate them with a comma.

Language

The Language section allows you to filter profiles by specific languages, such as English, French, or Spanish.

Separate multiple languages with a comma to find people who speak any of the selected languages.

Education

The Education section lets you filter profiles by school names, such as McGill University.

Enter multiple schools separated by commas to find people who attended any of the specified institutions.

Limit Results

The Limit Results section lets you control the number of records returned in your search.

You can set an overall limit (up to 50,000 records per search) and a limit per company (up to 100).

To exceed 50,000 records, you will need to upgrade your plan.