The Person Department filter allows you to include or exclude specific departments when looking for individual people. It is designed for use in the Person search, where the goal is to identify contacts who work within particular functional areas.
When to Use This Filter
The filter is most useful when you are targeting individuals based on their department, such as Marketing and advertising, Sales, Accounting and finance, or Engineering.
By selecting the departments you want to include or exclude, you ensure that the people surfaced in your search match the functional criteria you are focusing on.
Using the Filter in a Company First Workflow
Although the Person Department filter is built for finding people, it can also be valuable earlier in your workflow if you begin by searching for companies first. In that scenario, the filter helps you identify companies that have employees working in the departments you plan to engage with.
This can prevent saving companies as leads that do not have the right types of contacts. For example, when planning outreach to Finance teams, you may want to shortlist only companies that actually have people working in Finance.
How This Differs from the Department Size Filter
The Person Department filter and the Department Size filter serve different purposes.
Person Department filter
Helps you find people belonging to selected departments. When applied during company search, it returns companies that have at least one person in the chosen departments.Department Size filter
Filters companies based on the number of employees working in a department. It does not filter the individuals themselves. Instead, it focuses solely on the company’s department size.
If your goal is to locate specific people, use the Person Department filter. If you want to evaluate whether a company has a team of a certain size, use the Department Size filter.
How Departments Are Defined
All available departments are predefined and categorized by Ocean. The categorization is based on the job titles of individual employees. This ensures consistent grouping across companies and industries, even when job titles vary.
Tips for Best Results
For broader results, combine the Person Department filter with the Seniority filter.
For more precise targeting, use the Job title filter instead.
Apply it early in a company first workflow to avoid collecting irrelevant leads.
Summary
The Person Department filter helps you focus on people working in specific functional areas and can also streamline a company first workflow by ensuring that the companies you select employ people in the departments you care about.
It works differently from the Department Size filter, which measures company team sizes rather than filtering individual contacts.
Departments are predefined by Ocean based on job title data to keep results consistent and reliable.