Anatomy of a lead

What it is

A lead is one row in a project’s export — the join of a single hiring signal, one person at the hiring company, and that company’s own record. Every field on the row traces back to exactly one of three sources: the job posting itself, the people-data provider SignalsAPI queried for that person and company, or a value SignalsAPI derived after the fact.

Field What it is Source
email Verified email address People-data provider
email_status The result of SignalsAPI’s email verification step Derived value
is_usable Whether this lead counts toward the project’s usable-lead total Derived value
first_name First name People-data provider
last_name Last name People-data provider
title Job title People-data provider
headline LinkedIn headline People-data provider
linkedin_url LinkedIn profile URL People-data provider
company_name Company name People-data provider
company_domain Company domain People-data provider
company_website Company website People-data provider
company_industry Industry People-data provider
company_headcount Number of employees People-data provider
company_headquarters HQ location People-data provider
company_description Company description People-data provider
company_linkedin Company LinkedIn URL People-data provider
signal_title Hiring signal job title The job posting
signal_url Hiring signal URL The job posting
signal_location Signal location The job posting
signal_country Signal country The job posting
signal_description Full job description The job posting
ai_field_1 - ai_field_5 AI-generated custom fields Derived value

Why it matters

The source tells you how much to trust a field and whether it’s worth re-checking. A job-posting field is only as fresh as the posting itself. A people-data provider field carries whatever accuracy limits that provider has. A derived field — email_status, is_usable, the ai_field_* set — is something SignalsAPI computed from the other two, not something you can look up independently.

How it fits the pipeline

The job posting is found first, which is where every signal_* field comes from. SignalsAPI then looks up the hiring company and a person there through a people-data provider, which is where the contact and company fields come from. Only after both of those exist does SignalsAPI derive the row’s status fields and decide whether it’s usable. See How it works for the full walkthrough.

Recent changes

  • 2025-04-04 — Option “Auto-reject people without emails” was removed from Lead lists, option “Emails required” was added to personas instead. If turned on, all people will have emails already on the “Personas” stage. “Unlock email” link removed from lead lists, as all emails are already unlocked.

  • 2024-05-13 — Leads within a leadlist, matches within personas and filters can be filtered by date

  • 2024-05-09 — By default, deduplication of matches occurs within each run, not across the entire search. This avoids confusion regarding the actual match count for a given run. Deduplication on the search level and globally is still available as a lead list setting.

  • 2024-05-08 — If leadlist is reset while running, the run is terminated

  • 2024-05-06 — Company description is shown with line breaks instead of smashing all lines together

  • 2024-05-06 — Showing job description

  • 2024-05-01 — People in lead list have addresses

  • 2024-04-30 — When you click “approve” or “reject” it shows the next lead, saving a few clicks

  • 2024-04-29 — New leads are marked as “New”, and then change to “Seen” when you open them for the first time.

  • 2024-04-28 — Lead settings can be applied to new leads only, or the whole lead list can be emptied and re-run with the new settings.

  • 2024-04-28 — Automatic approval and rejection rules can be set in lead list settings.

  • 2024-03-27 — Showing uploaded matches with a white “uploaded” badge in the matches list, and an “uploaded” button in place of approval buttons in match view.

  • 2024-03-24 — Matches can be manually approved

  • 2024-03-24 — Search has a new parameter to require manual pre-approval of each lead before uploading