How to Search LinkedIn for Sourcing and Recruiting
LinkedIn is one of the most searchable social networks, and with many users filing out their profiles with as much detail as a resume, LinkedIn offers the deepest occupational and professional data of any of the social media sites. As such, it is extremely important that sourcers and recruiters learn how to master all of the various ways you can search LinkedIn to find potential candidates.
Through text and video, in this article I will show you how to extract the most value and results from LinkedIn’s search interface, X-Ray searching LinkedIn, unlocking out-of-network results, and leveraging LinkedIn’s unique advanced search operators.
LinkedIn’s Search Interface
LinkedIn’s search interface is quite robust, supporting full Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) for both keyword and structured field search (current/past title, current/past company, and school), allowing you to create complex and precise search strings. Interestingly, I haven’t hit the limit of LinkedIn’s search capability yet in terms of the maximum number of characters/words it can accept – it appears bottomless. Also of note is that even with a free LinkedIn account, you are able to save up to 3 searches.
Click the image below to watch a short video of how to use LinkedIn’s search interface effectively, how to save searches, and a demonstration of LinkedIn accepting a search string of 1000 words.
As you can see, pretty much the only ”nice-to-have” search capability missing from LinkedIn is root-word/stem search.
X-Ray Searching LinkedIn
The vast majority of LinkedIn profiles are “public,” meaning that they are published on the web. In fact, I believe that when anyone creates a LinkedIn profile, the default/recommended setting is “Full View,” which automatically makes the profile available for Internet search engines to index them and make them available for searching. Only if someone takes the time to go into their “Account & Settings” and change their “Public Profile” to “None/off” would they not show up in web (Google, etc.) searches.
If a LinkedIn profile is published to the web, it can be found by using Internet search engines. This means that anyone can leverage a search engine such as Google and use the site: command to X-Ray search LinkedIn for all public profiles – whether they are in that person’s network or not.
This is especially helpful for those who have relatively small networks and for those who do not pay for premium access to Linkedin. When X-Raying LinkedIn, LinkedIn doesn’t “know” who you are, so it cannot limit your search results to only those people in your network. Also, with a free account, users are limited to viewing the first 100 results of any search when using LinkedIn’s search interface. Using a site like Google to X-Ray into LinkedIn, you can view up to 1000 results.
Exclusion-Focused X-Ray String for Google
This string is designed to find and retrieve profiles by excluding non-profile results:
site:linkedin.com -intitle:answers -intitle:updated -intitle:directory -inurl:jobs -intitle:profile -inurl:blog -intitle:groups -inurl:events
Inclusion-Focused X-Ray String for Google
Instead of trying to exclude a long list of false positive non-profile terms, this string is designed to retrieve results by targeting ”in” or “pub” in the urls of LinkedIn profiles - a Boolean Black Belt exclusive:
site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory
Click on the image below to view a brief video on how to effectively X-Ray search Linkedin, which details how to target local candidates, and how to search by industry:
I will leave the comparison of inclusion-focused vs. exclusion-focused X-Ray strings to another post, or to someone else feeling frisky enough to tackle it. 
X-Ray String to Search for Current Title
This string employs Google’s wildcard (asterisk) operator to target the phrase on LinkedIn profiles where current title is listed:
site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory “current * TITLE”
Click on the image below to view a brief video on how to effectively X-Ray search LinkedIn targeting people based on current title:
Unlocking “Private” Profiles
When searching from within LinkedIn, you will inevitably at some point encounter a result of someone that is not in your LinkedIn nework - there will be no name listed:
And when you click on a result like this, instead of showing you a name, it says “Private.”
When you encounter this, do not despair – you can unlock many “private” results such as these using the X-Ray technique. This is because many “private” results are not truly private – you just can’t see the profile and the person’s name because they are not in your LinkedIn network. However, unless the person went out of their way to change their account settings to not publish their profile to the web, Internet search engines have indexed the profile and it can be both searched for and found. And when you use a search engine to X-Ray search into LinkedIn, LinkedIn has no idea who you are, so it cannot prevent you from seeing people who are not in your network.
Click on the image below for a short video that walks through 2 examples of unlocking private profiles using the X-Ray search technique:
Advanced Operators
IMPORTANT NOTE: 8/24/09 It apears that since LinkedIn implemented their “dynamic refinements,” they no longer support their advanced search operators. I’ve written them and have not received a reply at this time. I’ll keep you posted.
In addition to supporting the standard Boolean operators, LinkedIn has their own set of unique ”advanced operators” that allow you to “hand-code” search strings that control most of LinkedIn’s structured fields (current/past title, current/past company, school, industry, joined, and location) without having to use the advanced search interface. In my opinion – this is one of the coolest and most useful aspects of searching Linkedin.
Click on the image below for a brief video showing you how to take advantage of LinkedIn’s advanced operators, and how you can combine them with standard Boolean queries to find people:
Conclusion
When it comes to searching LinkedIn to find candidates, you have several options – be sure to master and employ them all!
Here’s a breakdown of the Pros/Cons of each:
LinkedIn’s search interface:
Pros:
- Full Boolean logic in keyword, title, company, and school fields
- Ability to create insanely long and precise search strings
- Can search structured fields including current/past title, current/past company, school
- Precise location search, down to 10 mile zip code radius
Cons
- No root-word/wildcard search (LinkedIn, are you reading this?)
- You can’t see people who aren’t in your network (by design, I know)
- You’re limited to viewing the first 100 results with a free account
X-Ray Searching LinkedIn:
Pros:
- You can see ANY public profile, whether they are in your network or not
- You can view up to 1000 results
- You can leverage configurable proximity search (via Exalead) to find people on LinkedIn based on what they DO, not just what they say
Cons
- No support of full Boolean logic (via Google)
- Limited to 32 search terms (via Google)
- No structured field search (current/past title, current/past company, school)
- Limited to metro area search (no precise zip code search)
LinkedIn’s Advanced Operators
Pros:
- You can hand-code search strings using both Boolean operators and LinkedIn’s advanced operators to search for keywords and structured field data, controlling practically all of LinkedIn’s search fields
- All of the benefits of using LinkedIn’s search interface
- You can save your searches in Notepad and simply copy and paste them any time you need them, as pseudo-saved searches
Cons
- All the limitations of searching within LinkedIn (can’t see out-of-network results, limited to 100 with a free account)
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Glen, this is awesome material. Very helpful and presented in great bite-sized segments. Much appreciated!
Glen, great review of all you can do on linkedin.com. The only thing I’ve noticed is I’ve often searched linkedin.com for contacts, then found other contacts later on that were NOT in my search results before, yet had all the keywords I searched on, AND they were within 3 degrees of me. I think linkedin’s search has some glitches in it…. just so you’re aware.
There are so many opportunities to use linkedin.com to search for potential hires! I like how any public profile can be viewed.
Will there be a way to view profiles not connected to your network in the future?
Glen as always great piece. One question however, why would you ever want to use the exclusion string when you can cut down on the number of string symbols with the inclusion string? Just want to make sure I not overlooking anything
Glen
This post was very well put together, thanks. I agree that LinkedIn needs to incorporate root word and wild card searches. Do you think that wink.com works to find those who aren’t in one’s network?
Glen
This has been of great help. My only question is there a way to extract email data from the profiles once you’ve identified the people through the Google search?
Glen – Nice piece. The wall street journal wrote a similar story yesterday on resume overload. See it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204475004574126832685403014.html
Glen, really good piece. For the international sources under us. How would you approach finding people in specific countries like France, Germany etc. When sourcing directly on LI they add “countryCode=de” for Germany but how can turn that into a Google string. Just adding the countries as keywords gives me as well people that have it in the profile but are not necessarily working there.
I would move you up to Sourcing God status if you could figure out a string for adding multiple countries
Ted,
I’m ready for the promotion.
I’ve just figured out France and Germany. Might take me some time to do a polished post on it, say Tuesday, May 26th or the 28th. But I can send you something sooner. Can you email me?
Thanks!
Regina,
Great minds think alike. I noticed that all of the LinkedIn X-Ray search examples I could find from others on the Internet were all exclusion-focused, requiring a huge list of things they were trying to remove from the results. I’m not sure, but I may have been the first person to take a different approach by targeting results that are profiles rather than avoiding results that are not. I don’t ever use the long exclusion-focused strings anymore, and rely heavily upon (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory, which seems to do a very strong job of nailing profiles and very few false positives.
I just wanted to show everyone there were 2 ways of approaching the same problem – exclusion vs. inclusion.
Hi Glen,
Truly impressed by your work. Recruiting is not my main employment. Im a offshore lead generation specialist who sources potential Expatriate clients and make appointments for my wife to meet them. She is offshore financial planner working with Expats in Asia. I have been using google and social networks as sourcing tools for a number of years this has helped me to produce a database of over 25,000 expats across the region. Its striking how similar my work is to a recruiters. Your posts have helped me immensley. Your blog has clarified many techniques. Keep up the great work.
Glen,
Kudos to you for a really useful stuff for X-raying LI. It is of great help.
Thanks
Is there a way to get more than 1000 results from Google or is there different search engine that doesn’t limit the results
Thanks for your help
Boolean Black Belt,
Thank you for your excellent coverage of how to search prospects and candidates. I live in Asia, and I’m currently trying to find people in a specific country in here, and I can’t seem to narrow the profiles down to a one single country. If you can e-mail me an answer, I would appreciate it so so soooo much and you would make my life easier!
-Bego
Glen,
Awesome Stuff!! You did a great job!!
Boolean Black Belt,,
Do you have any tips on how to target junior people on Linkedin, such as those graduating in the last 2 years? I often need to find candidates with 2 or 3 yrs experience max. I Tried
“education * 2007″ in via an X-ray search which generates profiles with “education” in the body (as opposed to 2007 in education field!). Any ideas how to filter by seniority or years experience? I cannot find advice on this anywhere!!!
Thanks!
In case anyone is interested, after several hours of research, I figured this one out. Linkedin doesn’t enable search for dates (it wont register dates that are included in the fields, that is i.e. if someones current position is listed as “1998 – present”, entering “1998 – present” will not generate that profile ) HOWEVER if you launch the x_ray search, you can add -1998 -1999 -2000 -1997 -1996 -1995 -1994 -1992 -1991 -1990 -1989 -1988 -1987 -1986 -1985 -1984 -1983 -1982 -1981 -1980 -1979 -1978 -1977 -1976 -1975 -1974 -1973 -1972 -1971 -1970 -1969 -1968 -1967 -1966 -1965 -1964 -1963 -1962 -1961 -1960 to your search string. It works brilliantly! If anyone has ideas about searching internally by dates, please share.
Also, one other thing, regarding the asterisk in Google, I get different results for “current * product” then I do for
“current * * product”
One asterisk seems to only replace 1 word!
So “current * product” did not generate a profile with Current: senior product manager but “current * * product” did!
Glen, this has been a big help to me. I tried using your strings on Linkedin and for some reason when I try to add industry it doesn’t work.
Here is an example
ctitle:”human resources” (public relations) industry:public relations and communications country: “united states” zip:10001
fyi-I used Linkedin’s industry name exactly as they have it.
Any suggestions? Am I doing something wrong?
I would appreciate your help?
Thanks again for the info. It is really great.
Cyndi
Great resources! Thanks for taking the time to put them up here!
Regards
Michelle
Glen
I went through all of your tutorials on how to x-ray LinkedIn. They were great! Thanks for sharing.
I have a question, is there a way to narrow a search to someone that has been out of college 10 years or less? I am fishing for a candidate in a very large ocean. It is software sales, in any of several states in the northeast and I am trying to find a strong “up and coming” sales executive. My client preferes Oracle sales folks. If for example search LinkedIn in a 100 mile radius of Boston for sales in the title I get over 1000 in the results.
Thanks sharing,
Regards,
Joseph
Hi Glen,
Great stuff,
I just found that now LInkedin doesn’t give any result for the Advance Operators.
I tried a search with the following criteria and did not get any results:-
ccompany:”hewitt associates” ctitle:developer country:”united states” zip:60069 radius:25
Thanks,
YK
This was outstanding and helped solve a problem I was having with so many private profiles coming up in my search. Once you uncover the name in the private profiles, where do you go first for contact information? Is there a specific site you like the best?