Being the premier professional social networking platform, LinkedIn is an incredible resource for finding prospects, new jobs, relevant business content, and much more. One of the most critical features of the platform is its search functionality which surfaces numerous types of results and information depending on how well you know how to leverage it. Here are some of the best ways to use LinkedIn’s enhanced search to your advantage.
Know Where to Find the Search Filters
When you first open LinkedIn, you will see a search bar that will take you to a results page once you complete a search. Once you land there, you will see an “All Filters” button, which will open a sidebar to the right. You will have access to numerous filters that will help you narrow down your results to find precisely what you are looking for.
You can filter across many categories, such as people, schools, companies, events, jobs, and others. Each filter category has specific search options. For example, filtering by people allows you to see people who are your first, second, or third connections. Filtering jobs only allows you to sort by recency or relevancy, the date jobs were posted, experience level, and other relevant factors.
To make the most out of enhanced search, you will need to explore the different filters and their opinions to see how they can help you get the best and most precise results and information.
Incorporate Boolean Search into Your Searches
LinkedIn enabled Boolean search years ago, but it seems only a few people know the feature exists and how to use it. Boolean search is incredibly important in finding exactly what you need without using the filters described above, but you can use both simultaneously.
The three Boolean operators on LinkedIn are “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT.”
The operator AND ensures searches include all the keywords specified in your query. For example, if you are looking for people who have worked at Google and IBM, you would search “Google AND IBM.” You can use more words, including the term “AND” between them, but you will see diminishing returns the more search words you add.
Remember that these Boolean operators should always be capitalized.
The OR Boolean operator surfaces results containing one search term or the other. Using the example above, a recruiter might be trying to find people who have worked at Google or IBM since they would have the needed skills. Such a query would be “Google OR IBM.”
The last Boolean operator, NOT, is a powerful and exclusionary one. It is used to exclude results that have the word following the operator. You cannot use it alone as it is a filter that removes what you do not want from the search results and leaves results containing the word(s) before the operator. Let’s use the example above again. Let’s say you want to find people who have worked for Google but have not worked for IBM. The query would be “Google NOT IBM.”
LinkedIn lets you use these operators to help you find precisely what you are looking for in multiple categories, such as people, groups, events, posts, and more. These operators are very powerful when trying to find people in specific positions who have worked at specific companies.
Use Enhanced Search for Lead Generation
We have discussed two important features of LinkedIn’s enhanced search that can help you get the most out of it, so let’s now look at one of their most important practical applications: finding prospects and leads. LinkedIn enhanced search is a critical tool for B2B businesses looking to get more leads and B2B customers or to create interest and buzz around their products.
The first way it can do this is by helping businesses and marketers find the exact people they want to market to. Let’s say a business is looking to reach the procuring managers of specific companies. A search for “procuring manager” will yield results that marketers and salespeople can filter through using the filters provided and the Boolean operators available.
Once a marketer or salesperson has a list of prospects they want to contact, they can contact them on LinkedIn, through their websites, or by using various techniques to find their emails so they can send them communication directly.
Leverage Search Predictions
LinkedIn’s enhanced search also gives you search predictions as you enter a search term. These predictions are based on searches conducted by other people, so they can be a great way of helping you get a better idea of what to search for.
Additionally, you can use these search predictions to get new ideas of what you should be searching for, which is especially useful if looking for specific content, people, topics, or jobs.
Stay Anonymous When Researching Leads
When you conduct a search on LinkedIn, the people who come up in the search results are notified they have appeared in a search. This can be good or bad, depending on how you view it.
Depending on your tagline on your profile, which people will see when they see they have appeared in a search, this can cause them to reach out or even to try to find out more about you. Even though the results will vary from business to business and person to person, it can be a great way to kickstart your inbound marketing efforts.
On the other end of the spectrum, you might not want people to know you are looking at their profiles, especially if you are conducting research and do not want them to do the same to you. It can be a bad look if competitors realize you are looking at the profiles of their employees, especially high-level executives.
Enhanced search allows you to stay anonymous when doing this by allowing you to enable privacy browsing. When you do this, the people you search will see that they appeared in a search, but they will not know who searched for them.
LinkedIn’s enhanced search is one of the most important features on the professional networking platform as it allows you to find what you want quickly and to shape your searches to find precisely what you are looking for.
