The Job Title, Seniority, and Department filters help you identify the right decision-makers within your target companies.

Using these filters together allows you to broaden or narrow your search depending on how specific your ideal prospect is.

Search by Job Title

The most common way to search is by using the Job Title filter.

The Job Title search is keyword-based, so it's best practice to include both abbreviations and full job titles.

For example, instead of searching only for:

• CEO

also include:

• Chief Executive Officer

Similarly, consider searching for variations such as:

• CRO
• Chief Revenue Officer

This helps ensure you capture contacts who use different job title formats.

If you have a large list of job titles, you can upload up to 1,000 titles using the CSV Upload option.

Use Exact Job Title Match

By default, Job Title Search returns both exact and closely related matches.

For example, searching for Marketing Director may also return titles such as:

• Senior Marketing Director
• Director of Marketing
• Global Marketing Director

If you only want contacts with the exact job title entered, enable Exact Job Title Match.

Search by Seniority and Department

If you don't know the exact job titles used by your target companies, combine the Seniority and Department filters.

This is often the most effective way to identify decision-makers because job titles vary significantly between organisations.

For example, someone leading the HR function may have titles such as:

• HR Director
• Head of People
• Chief People Officer
• Director of Employee Experience

Instead of searching for every possible title, select:

• Department: Human Resources
• Seniority: Senior Leadership

Cognism uses AI to classify contacts by seniority and department, helping identify the most relevant people even when job titles differ.

Combine Job Titles with Seniority

You can also use broader Job Title keywords together with Seniority filters.

For example:

• Job Title: Recruitment
• Seniority: Senior Leadership

This returns senior decision-makers whose job titles contain "Recruitment", while excluding more junior roles.

This approach is particularly useful when targeting a specific function rather than a specific title.

Best Practices

For the best search results:

• Include both abbreviations and full job titles whenever possible.
• Use Seniority and Department when job titles vary between companies.
• Combine broad Job Title keywords with Seniority to target decision-makers.
• Enable Exact Job Title Match only when you need precise title matching, as it may reduce the number of results.
• Upload a CSV if you need to search for a large list of job titles.

Examples

Tip: If you're receiving too few results, disable Exact Job Title Match or broaden your search by using Department and Seniority instead of relying solely on specific job titles.