With more and more candidates leaving work email addresses in their resumes,‚ I discovered a great sourcing strategy by accident. When sending‚ emails to several candidates in my database earlier this year‚ over the holidays, I was surprised to receive ALOT of leads to pursue.

After sending out emails to candidates, I received the following messages as the “Out of Office AutoReply”:

Example 1:

I will be on personal vacation from‚ July‚ 3 through‚ July 4‚ and will return to the Herndon office on‚ July 5. I will have limited access to email and voicemail. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact —– at (—)— —-.

Example 2:

Thank you for your email. I will be on vacation March‚ 15-19 without access to email. In my abscence, pls contact the following individuals:

—- —– Management Issues, Sarbanes Oxley Testing/General Remediation Issues, IT Audit

—- —– Logging & Monitoring Project, ESM Projects, CobiT Project, Operational Risk

—- —– Scheduling and Administrative Matters

Gets you thinking doesn’t it? In these two emails, I have colleagues and managers of candidates along with direct dial extensions and some titles. You can work the email address patterns from there too. I have tons of these types of emails to go through every time a holiday comes up, whether it be Memorial Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Try for yourself and see where it takes you.