LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million members worldwide. With so many profiles on the platform, finding the right connections can be challenging without the proper search tools. Luckily, LinkedIn does have an advanced search option that allows you to filter your results based on a variety of parameters.
What is LinkedIn Advanced Search?
LinkedIn’s advanced search option allows you to search for profiles using more filters and criteria than just keywords. With advanced search, you can filter by location, industry, company, job title, skills, education, and more. This allows you to narrow your search results to find the most relevant profiles and make more targeted connection requests.
Some key things you can do with LinkedIn advanced search include:
- Search by location – Filter profiles by country, state/province, or city
- Search by company – Find profiles who work or have worked at a specific company
- Search by job title – Target profiles with a certain job title like “Marketing Manager”
- Search by industry – Connect with profiles in your industry like “Information Technology”
- Search by school – Find fellow alumni from your university
- Search by skills – Connect with profiles who have skills you’re looking for
Advanced search essentially allows you to combine multiple filters to drill down to very specific search results.
How to Use LinkedIn Advanced Search
Using LinkedIn’s advanced search option is easy. Just follow these steps:
1. Go to www.linkedin.com and log into your account.
2. Click on the search bar at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
3. Click on the “Advanced” link next to the search bar. This will open up the advanced search filters.
4. Specify your search criteria using the various filters for location, company, job title, skills, etc.
5. Click the “Search” button to execute your search.
6. Browse and filter through the search results to find the best profiles.
7. Connect with the most relevant profiles by sending a personalized connection request.
Here is a breakdown of each search filter available in LinkedIn advanced search:
Location Filters
The location filters allow you to specify the country, state/province, or city of the profiles you want to find. This is useful for targeting your search by geographic area.
Company Filters
With the company filters you can search for profiles:
- Currently working at a specific company
- Who have worked at a company in the past
- By company name – Search by the full or partial company name
- By company size – Filter profiles at companies with a certain number of employees
- By industry – Target profiles by their company’s industry like healthcare, finance, etc.
Job Title Filters
The job title filters allow you to search for profiles with specific job titles like “Social Media Manager” or “Software Engineer”. You can also search by job function like marketing, IT, finance, etc.
School Filters
With the school filters you can search for profiles who attended a certain university or college. You can filter by the full school name or abbreviations. This is great for connecting with alumni.
Skills Filters
The skills filters enable you to search for LinkedIn members based on skills added to their profile. You can target specific hard skills like “Social Media Marketing” as well as soft skills like “Leadership”.
Language Filters
You can also filter profiles based on languages spoken. This could help you find profiles fluent in a certain language like Spanish, French, or Mandarin.
Other Filters
Some additional filters include:
- Relationship – Search for profiles based on your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections
- Profile language – Filter profiles that are written in a specific language
- Years of experience – Target profiles with a minimum number of years of experience
- Nonprofit interests – Find profiles with nonprofit affiliations and interests
As you can see, LinkedIn advanced search gives you many options for drilling down your search results. You can combine several filters to find very targeted profiles that closely match your search criteria.
Advanced Boolean Search
Beyond the filters, LinkedIn also supports Boolean search operators which allow you to combine keywords with “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” to further refine your search query.
Here are some examples of Boolean searches you can do:
- Marketing AND New York – Profiles with marketing who are located in New York
- Engineer OR Developer – Profiles with either engineer or developer in their profile
- Nurse NOT Practitioner – Nurses excluding nurse practitioners
By leveraging Boolean operators, you can craft precise keyword searches in combination with the other filters.
Tips for Effective LinkedIn Advanced Searches
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of LinkedIn’s advanced search:
- Use multiple filters – The more filters you use, the more your results can be narrowed down.
- Try different keyword combinations – Brainstorm keywords and experiment with different Boolean operators.
- Search by 2nd degree connections – Unlock more results by searching beyond just your 1st degree network.
- Personalize invitations – Review profiles and send customized connection requests.
- Follow up with messages – After connecting, follow up to start relationships.
- Save searches – You can save advanced searches to rerun them easily in the future.
Advanced Search vs. Premium Search
It’s important to note the difference between LinkedIn’s free advanced search and premium search with a LinkedIn Premium account:
Advanced Search | Premium Search |
---|---|
Free to use | Requires premium account subscription |
Access to all basic filters | All filters + additional options like profile keywords |
See aggregate # of search results | See full list of search results beyond 25 |
Can only message 1st connections | Can message anyone in search results |
So premium search provides some additional filters and options, but advanced search is still very powerful on its own as a free tool.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn advanced search provides a robust set of filters and options to help you easily refine your profile searches. The ability to target results by location, company, job title, skills, and more makes connecting with the right professionals much simpler.
To use it, access the advanced filters from the main LinkedIn search bar and combine criteria that’s important to your search. Boolean operators add even more precision. With some practice, you can learn to master LinkedIn advanced search to boost your networking and recruiting efforts.