LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that allows users to connect with other professionals in their industry. With over 800 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become an invaluable resource for researching companies and their employees. One of the key features of LinkedIn is the ability to see who works at a particular company and view their profiles. So can you see all employees of a company on LinkedIn? Let’s take a closer look.
LinkedIn’s Company Pages
Every company can create an official Company Page on LinkedIn. This page allows the company to share information about itself, job openings, company culture and more. It also displays a list of some employees who work at that company. However, this list is not comprehensive and will only show a small subset of employees. Companies can choose which employees they want to showcase on their Company Page. Typically, they select executives, team managers, recruiters, and other prominent roles within the organization. So the Company Page alone does not reveal all staff members.
Searching for Company Employees
You can manually search for employees of a specific company using LinkedIn’s search function. To do this, search for the company name and filter by “People” instead of jobs, content, etc. This will display profiles of some employees at that company. However, there are still limitations with this method.
LinkedIn’s search algorithm does not index every single employee. It focuses on surfacing the most relevant profiles based on your search query and connections. Additionally, some members choose to hide their company affiliation or exclude it from their profile. Others may have incomplete profiles without a current position listed. Therefore, a manual search will only uncover a portion of staff members, not necessarily the company’s entire workforce.
Connecting with Company Employees
If you connect directly with employees who work at a certain company on LinkedIn, you may gain more visibility into others who work there as well. When you connect with someone, you then have access to view their connections. Those second-degree connections of yours may also work at the same company, thus expanding your visibility into the employee roster.
However, connecting with employees one-by-one is highly time consuming. Also, not every employee will accept connection requests from strangers or people outside their industries. So while connecting within a company’s internal network can uncover more staff members, it still will not capture everyone.
Following Company Pages
Following a company’s Company Page may also increase your visibility into their employees. When employees update their profiles or share new content, these activities may become visible on your feed. However, you would only see updates from connections within your network or employees that choose to publicly share content.
Using LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter is a paid talent solution for businesses. It provides recruiters and hiring managers additional visibility into potential candidates at a given company. With Recruiter, they can search for specific skill sets and experience levels across LinkedIn’s entire membership base.
However, access to LinkedIn Recruiter is limited to those purchasing the paid subscription. Individual users cannot access the Recruiter level of search or its full visibility into all employees of a company. It remains restricted to corporate recruiting purposes only.
Why Full Employee Visibility Is Limited
While LinkedIn provides useful tools for researching companies and connecting with industry professionals, there are limitations on viewing all employees of an organization. Here are some reasons why full employee visibility is restricted:
- Privacy – Members control what information appears in their profile and who can view their connections.
- Search algorithms – LinkedIn’s algorithms surface the most relevant profiles for search queries.
- Incomplete data – Not all members fully complete their profiles with current positions.
- Scale – The sheer size of LinkedIn’s user base makes indexing every single user unrealistic.
- Recruiter tool – Full visibility is reserved only for companies using Recruiter for talent sourcing.
In summary, while you can use LinkedIn to gather substantial data on a company’s employees, it will unlikely reveal their entire workforce or every team member. Profiles are limited to what individuals choose to share publicly.
Alternative Research Options
While LinkedIn has limits on employee visibility, some alternative options exist for researching a company’s staff. These include:
- The company’s website – Look for an About page, leadership team page, or employee directory.
- Professional contacts at the company – Reach out to your network connections who may provide insights.
- Job search sites – Company profiles on sites like Glassdoor or Indeed may have employee demographics.
- Events – Attend industry conferences or events where company employees may be present.
- Press releases – Announcements of new hires, promotions, or awards.
Combining information gathered from LinkedIn with these other research tactics can give you a more complete picture of a company’s organizational structure and staff roster.
Conclusion
While LinkedIn provides useful tools for researching companies and their employees, there are limits to fully viewing every employee of an organization. Factors like user privacy, incomplete profiles, and search algorithms restrict full visibility. Some techniques like connecting with staff members, following Company Pages, or using Recruiter expand insight, but will unlikely surface a business’s complete workforce. Supplementing LinkedIn data with information from job sites, press releases, events, and your own network can provide a more holistic view of a company’s personnel and structure.
