Linkedin is of course a fantastic tool for recruiters, but unfortunately not every company will be listed in your sector, even though that may be hard to believe!

Saying that recently I needed to top up my contacts within a certain sector and when you need to start a new desk or division from scratch, working through Yellow pages, Applegate or industry lists can be hard work, particularly if you are looking to get all your contacts into your CRM database.

Last week I decided to search the web for some software that could do this for me, having experienced using broadlook in the past I was sure I could find something just as suitable. As a result I came across Mozenda which is a less expensive alternative and if you are working a niche market without too many companies, you could get most contacts done for free.

Having used both systems I found Mozenda to be perfect when you just want to scrape a specific website for names, addresses, telephone numbers and emails, it takes a little time to set up but when working it just fly’s through the lists, then it is just a case of downloading in excel and then uploading into your CRM of choice, no more cutting and pasting!

If you want a more sophisticated set up and then you may want to look at Broadlook, which is a lot more expensive but goes beyond Mozenda, in that once it has the contact details it will then go off and find all the contacts within those companies and is known more as a spidering software or a web crawler!

So depending on budget and what you want to achieve, both products are an ideal addition to your arsenal.