How to Use Hiring Signals to Time Your Sales Outreach (With a People Data API)

Timing beats targeting once your list is decent. A hiring signal gives you a date, and the date sets when you send.

LeadOcean holds no job postings. It holds the people those postings become: current roles with start dates, career history and company headcount, refreshed monthly. This guide builds the timing layer on top of that. For the tracking side, see how to track hiring signals.

TL;DR

• It takes about 25 minutes to size a segment, pull new leaders and assign each one a send window.
• It spends about 30 records: 25 from one search page and a few from enrichment. Counts are free.
• The windows are a rule of thumb, not a LeadOcean figure: recruiter build-up means act now, a new leader means wait a few weeks, then go.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean API key from app.leadocean.io. Free gives 1,000 records, one-off, no card.
• The key in your shell as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.
• One account domain to test on. The examples use acme.com.

export LEADOCEAN_API_KEY="paste-your-key-here"

Step 1: Map each signal to a send window

Write the rules down before you query anything. Each signal has a different clock.

The week counts are judgment. Test them against your own reply rates and change them.

Step 2: Size the segment for free

Count first. A people count with count=true and limit=1 as query parameters spends nothing, and meta.distinctCompanies tells you how many accounts it spans.

curl -s -G https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "title=Talent Acquisition,Recruiter" \
  --data-urlencode "jobFunction=Human Resources" \
  --data-urlencode "industry=Computer Software" \
  --data-urlencode "employeeRange=51-200" \
  --data-urlencode "country=US" \
  --data-urlencode "count=true" \
  --data-urlencode "limit=1" | jq '.meta | {total, distinctCompanies}'

Step 3: Pull new leaders at one account

Search by domain and function, then sort by start date on your side. Each row carries the current role and its start_date. The body is flat JSON and the filters are arrays.

curl -s https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "domain": ["acme.com"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "jobLevel": ["VP", "Director"],
    "limit": 25
  }' > page.json

This costs 25 records for the page. Print one row before you write a date cutoff. The person schema uses YYYY-MM-DD strings for dates.

jq '.data[0].contact_data.contact_current_experiences[0]' page.json

Step 4: Confirm the hire is external

A recent start date can be a promotion. A promoted leader already has a view and vendors, so the "new owner" window does not apply. Enrich the person and read the career history. Enrich takes one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id.

curl -s https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id": "PERSON_ID_FROM_STEP_3"}' \
  | jq '.data.resume_data.experiences[0:2][] | {job_title, company_name, start_date, end_date}'

If the previous role is at another company, it is an external hire. Past employers carry no company_id yet, so compare names. An enrichment that finds nobody is a 404 and costs nothing.

Step 5: Assign the send date

Do this in code so the calendar is repeatable. The script reads the page from Step 3, keeps rows with a start date, and adds a send date four weeks after it.

jq -r '.data[]
  | {name: .profile_data.profile_full_name,
     role: .contact_data.contact_current_experiences[0]}
  | select(.role.start_date != null)
  | [.name, .role.job_title, .role.start_date] | @csv' page.json > leaders.csv

Then add the offset in whatever tool you use to send. Four weeks is a starting point.

Step 6: Get emails only when the date arrives

Do not pull contact data for people you will not message this month. Wait for the send date, then reveal the email on the enrich call. reveal_email defaults to false and costs no extra record.

curl -s https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id": "PERSON_ID", "reveal_email": true}' \
  | jq '.data.contact_data | {email: .contact_emails[0]}'

Read email_status before you send. Bounced emails are not refunded.

What you get

Step 2 is free. We ran two counts on 2026-10-21 with leadocean_count_leads, both for US software companies with 51 to 200 staff.

"Mailable" means verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all, the tool's default. The recruiter count is larger than the sales-leader count, which is the point: at this size a dedicated recruiter is a visible flag. Title matching is by keyword, so read a sample.

A row from Step 3 comes back in the shape below. This is the response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    {
      "profile_data": { "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe" },
      "contact_data": {
        "contact_current_experiences": [
          { "job_title": "VP of Sales", "company_name": "Acme", "start_date": "2026-09-01" }
        ]
      },
      "meta": { "source_ids": { "person_id": "PERSON_ID" } }
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "count": 1 }
}

Troubleshooting

FAQ