Do you know how to effectively narrow your searches on LinkedIn?

Business owners and sales professionals search LinkedIn for potential clients and referral partners. Job seekers search to learn about companies and those in charge of hiring for them.

LinkedIn provides several filters that will help you to narrow any LinkedIn search. These are: years of experience, function, seniority level, company size and when joined (meaning when they joined LinkedIn.)

There are other filters available only if you pay for either the Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Recruiter option.

To help you get more specific results, use a Boolean search. The way these searches works is that you combine key words with operators like AND, NOT, or OR.

Also, when searching using a phrase, enclose the entire phrase in quotation marks.

Learn more at https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/75814

 

Searching for People

  1. Type a key word (or phrase) into the search box. Click on “search for all results for – key word you used.”
  2. Click on People.
  3. Narrow the search by going into the filters called Connections, Locations, Current Companies and All.
  4. Within Connections, select 1st, 2nd and/or 3rd and then click on Apply. Generally, I stick with 1st or 2nd.
  5. Within Locations, select the metro areas you want to search and click on Apply.
  6. For Current Companies, select the companies you want and click on Apply.
  7. Within All Filters, you have quite a few choices: Connections of, Industries, Past Companies, Schools, First Name, Last Name, and Job Title.

 

Searching Within a Company

  1. First, find the company by using the search box and clicking on it in the drop-down options shown to you.
  2. Review the About section and Specialties in the company page.
  3. Then click on Number of employees at the top of the company page.
  4. From here, you can apply the same filters you use in a People search.

 

Asking for Introductions

When you find people that you want to get to know, ask for help from your shared connections. To see if you have any, click on Shared Connections from within their profile.

Doing this will bring up a list of all the people to whom you are both connected. Select about three or four people who you feel would be most likely to help you. Contact these people via email and/or phone and ask them to do an email introduction of you and the person you want to meet.

If these shared connections know the potential connection well enough, they may even offer to set up a lunch or coffee visit with this person if you all are in the same metro area.

One caveat – some people accept LinkedIn invites from almost anyone who asks them to connect. These folks will have at least some connections they don’t know. The impact on you is that they may not be able to help you to meet that shared connection. When this happens, just thank them and reach out to another shared connection.

 

How About You?

What has been your experience in applying search filters on LinkedIn? What approaches would you suggest to a business owner, sales professional, and/or job seeker who’s using LinkedIn as a search tool?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those ages 45 and older, to become more effective and productive using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, business development professionals, business consultants, job seekers, and more – ranging from entrepreneurs to people in large corporations. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.