Reaching the right person is what makes every outreach campaign successful. No amount of outstanding email copy or appealing offer can make a difference. If you send it to the wrong contact, then nothing happens.
SignalHire just launched two new search filters in the People search database: Seniority Level and Department. These filters let you cut straight to the contacts that actually matter for your search.
Gartner research confirms the cost of this problem. On the flip side, poor prospecting can even hurt relationships with potential customers, and 73% of B2B buyers’ actively avoid suppliers who send outreach that does not match their needs. The stakes are real.
What the New Filters Do
Both filters appear in the Profile section of the left-side search panel in the People tab.
The Department filter lets you narrow results to a specific business function. You can target
- Engineering
- Sales
- Marketing
- Finance
- HR, Legal
- Operations
- and more
The Seniority Level filter lets you select one or more seniority tiers. The available levels are:
- Founder / Owner
- Board / Advisory
- C-Level
- VP
- Directors
- Head
- Senior
- Manager
- Junior
- Intern / Entry Level
You can choose one level or combine several tiers at the same time. This returns all selected values, the search runs through all at once.
How to Use the Seniority Level Filter
First, sign in to your SignalHire account:
Enter credentials, your registered email and password:
When you are in, open the People tab inside the SignalHire platform. The Seniority Level field appears below Job Title in the Profile filters section.
Click the Seniority Level field. A dropdown menu opens with the full list of available levels.
Choose the level that aligns with your purpose. The field is immediately followed by the filter tag.
Press Enter. The platform returns only profiles that match every applied filter.
When you locate the right profiles, click Reveal Contacts to unlock verified email addresses and direct phone numbers. It would be a single credit for all contact information for that profile.
How to Use the Department Filter
The Department filter works the same way.
Once on the People tab, select the Department field. Enter the name of the department or select it from suggestions.
So here are some helpful combos that could save you many hours of manual sorting:
- VP-level contacts in Engineering at SaaS companies
- Finance department C-Level and Founder profiles
- Sales Senior or Director level people at 200 – 1000 employee companies
- US and UK companies HR directors, heads
Once you build a refined list, you can save it as a Lead List, push it into a job project, or launch an outreach sequence directly from the platform.
How Sales Teams Use Seniority and Department Filters to Close Faster Off
But a good message is dead in the water if it’s sent to the wrong level. Pitching the C-Level for the junior analyst is a dead end. An VP who reads a first-time buyer message immediately checks out.
According to Gartner data, organizations lose $12.9 million annually because of poor quality data. One of the biggest contributing factors is targeting the wrong decision-makers. That kind of problem is completely removed by the Seniority Level filter. You specify the people you are looking for, and SignalHire delivers them all.
This is how to create a clean sales workflow with both filters:
Step 1. Define your ICP by tier
Apply the Seniority Level filter to define what level of decision making you require. Enterprise deals should begin at the VP and C-Level. Budget authority: Director and Head are often for mid-market
Step 2. Add the Department filter
Refine the results to the function that owns your use case. For example, If you are selling a finance tool filter for Finance. If you sell a dev tool, look for Engineering or Product. You no longer burn credits on contacts that will never own the buying decision.
Step 3. Reveal contact details in one step
Select Reveal Contacts on each matching profile. A single credit allows access to both the verified email and direct phone number. Pair this with the Email Finder and Phone Number Finder for teams running multi-channel sequences.
Step 4. Launch a targeted sequence
Push the list into Email Sequences and write messaging specific to that seniority tier and department. Head of sales responds differently than a VP of Engineering. Writing segmented means everything in your first line is relevant.
| Pro Tip: Stack Filters for Surgical Precision
Add a Seniority Level and Department first before adding in a Location filter to get results of a specific city, state or country. Example: Senior + VP in the Engineering department + San Francisco, CA + company headcount 100 to 500. This combination generates a short, highly targeted list instead of the thousands of irrelevant profiles you get with Identity-by-Location searches. You filter less and connect more. All contact details revealed in one click. One credit. No extra charge for email plus phone. |
How Recruiters Can Find Candidates by Seniority Level and Departments
Finding the right person to recruit comes even before you send a message. The Seniority Level and Department filters save you a lot of sourcing time by returning only profiles who fit your exact criteria.
Here is how recruiters use these filters in practice:
- Senior and executive searches. Select Director, VP or C-Level for Seniority Level Put in a Department filter for the function that you are hiring into, such as Engineering or Finance. The results are not including anybody under your threshold. You are reviewing candidates, rather than manually sorting them out. Use this approach to source passive candidates who match a specific level without browsing thousands of irrelevant profiles.
- Niche role sourcing. Department + Job Title near location. For example: Department = Data and Analytics; Job Title = Data Scientist, Location= Austin, TX. It exposes only people in that function and location. Add Seniority Level = Senior or above to further narrow it.
- Pipeline building by tier. Do separate searches on Junior, Senior and Manager level candidates within the same department. Save each as a distinct Lead List. You end up with tiered talent pools ready to activate when a role opens at any level.
- Cross-platform validation. When you find a promising profile on LinkedIn, open the SignalHire browser extension to reveal verified contact details in under five seconds. The seniority information visible on the LinkedIn profile lets you confirm the match before spending a credit.
Insight: Deloitte research notes that 72% of companies say that a talent shortage is one of their biggest challenges. Teams that fill roles the quickest are teams with pre-built, tiered talent pipelines. And the Seniority Level and Department filters make that pipeline a reality.
| Expert Observation
B2B buying decisions involve 11 or more different people in a mix of departments and seniority. Notably, more than half of buying committees have VP-level stakeholders, as Gartner research from 2025 indicates. This means that one interaction is seldom enough. Identify all relevant stakeholders in an account with the Department filter, and map out the entire decision-making structure ahead of your first outreach with the Seniority Level filter. |
Get Started
Both filters are live in your SignalHire account today. Open the People tab, click the Seniority Level or Department field, and run your first filtered search.
If you do not have an account yet, sign up for free and get your first credits to test the database. No credit card required to start.
