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How to find former employees of a company
Describe the company whose alumni you want
Add the competitor or target company name. Sculptor searches Clay's people database with the past-experiences filter toggled on to surface former employees.
Sculptor sources and verifies alumni contacts
Sculptor scans Clay's people database for contacts who previously worked at the company you specified, then waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified work email for each matched former employee.
Review alumni names and verified emails
The finished table has each person's name and, for matched rows, a verified work email. Push to Smartlead, Instantly, or your sequencer to trigger outreach.
Why Clay for finding ex-employees / alumni
Past-experiences toggle surfaces former employees fast
Get a targeted list of people who previously worked at any competitor or target company. Clay's Find People source includes a past-experiences toggle and filters for job title, function, location, and tenure dates so you scope the alumni cohort in minutes.
Waterfall enrichment finds verified emails at scale
Get a verified work email for matched alumni rows. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence and only charges credits when a provider returns a hit, keeping costs tied directly to coverage.
Consensus verification flags catch-alls and risky inboxes
Every email found runs through a consensus-based verification step, cross-checking multiple verifiers to flag catch-all domains and role inboxes before the list reaches your sequencer.
Push verified alumni lists to Outreach or Instantly
Route finished alumni rows directly to Outreach, Instantly, or Clay's native sequencer to trigger personalized outreach without any manual list exports or reformatting.
Clay is a game changer for marketing, data, and operations. We have 3x our enrichment rate with Clay’s combination of data providers. Clay makes it easy to use AI for GTM initiatives, unlocking new workflows that were infeasible before.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor find ex-employees of a company?
Sculptor uses Clay's Find People source with the "Include Past Experiences" toggle enabled, so it searches by where someone used to work rather than their current role. Type a company name like "Andreessen Horowitz" or an industry keyword, and Sculptor queries past-experience records to return up to 50,000 matching alumni. It then runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers to attach a verified email to each person.
How accurate are the alumni emails Sculptor returns?
Clay's waterfall enrichment lifts email coverage from roughly 30% with a single provider to around 80% by cycling through sources like Hunter, Datagma, and Apollo in sequence. Every returned address passes through ZeroBounce validation, which guarantees 99%+ accuracy on standard mailbox types. Because alumni may have changed roles since leaving, Clay flags stale records so you can filter before you export.
Can I find ex-employees in bulk for multiple companies?
Yes. Paste a list of company names, upload a CSV, or pipe rows from an existing Clay table, and Sculptor runs the past-experience search across every company in one batch. Each row gets waterfall-enriched with a verified email and deduplicated against your CRM. Push the final table directly into HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive, or export as a CSV for any other destination.
Is it legal to cold-email former employees for B2B outreach?
In the US, CAN-SPAM permits B2B cold email as long as every message includes a physical address, a clear unsubscribe link, and honest subject lines. In the EU, GDPR allows outreach under a documented "legitimate interest" basis, though you must honor opt-out requests promptly and avoid contacting personal addresses.
Rules vary by country and industry, so always check the regulations in your jurisdiction before launching a campaign.