How does Findem determine which candidate emails to send to?

How candidate emails are selected for outreach

When a candidate has more than three available emails, our platform automatically selects the top three most likely to result in a successful outreach. This helps you connect with candidates more efficiently while minimizing email bounces.

Why we prioritize emails

We use a mix of personal, school, and business email analysis to determine the most appropriate options—favoring verified and personal addresses first.

Ours goals are to:

• Maximize email connect rates

• Minimize bounce rates

• Focus outreach on high-confidence email addresses

Email selection process

Ideal state

If available, we prioritize what we call the "golden email." This means the candidate has previously replied from this address.

Otherwise, we use the ATS-confirmed email, which is verified via a connected ATS.

Note:

If either golden email or ATS-confirmed email is present, we use only that email for outreach. If neither is available, we apply heuristic rules below to select the top three best options.

Priority 1: Personal email prioritization

Personal emails are preferred whenever possible. Here’s how we rank them:

Highest Priority (Gmail with full name)

• Valid Gmail address containing first and last name

• Example: [e-mail] 

Medium Priority

• Gmail with partial name: [e-mail]

• Other low-bounce freemail providers with full or partial name like outlook.com, icloud.com, me.com, hotmail.com, live.com, etc.

Acceptable

• Freemail from trusted providers without name match

• Must not contain:

  • All-numeric usernames (e.g., [e-mail])

  • Special characters (e.g., %%%@@domain.com)

Priority 2: School and business emails

If fewer than three valid personal emails are found, we may include school or business emails—based on specific rules.

School emails (e.g., .edu)

We include school emails only if:

• The candidate is not currently employed by that school

• Their title includes terms like:

  • Student, Intern, Undergraduate, Estudiante, etc.

• The email address matches their name (full or partial)

Business emails

Included when:

• The domain matches the candidate's current company

• We prioritize formats based on company size:

  • Large companies: [e-mail], [e-mail]

  • Small companies: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Deprioritized and excluded emails

We avoid sending to:

• Emails from high-bounce domains (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, Yandex)

• Emails with:

  • Suspicious usernames (all numbers or symbols)

  • Very long usernames

• Catchall or unknown addresses, unless no other emails are available

FAQ

Q: Will emails always be sent to three addresses?
A: No, we only send to three emails if three high-confidence emails are available.

Q: What happens to invalid or bounced emails?
A: They are stored in our system and excluded from future selections.

Q: Do you deprioritize junk or suspicious-looking emails?
A: Yes, we deprioritize or exclude emails that are overly long, all numbers, or contain problematic symbols.