LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 750 million members. With so many professionals on the platform, LinkedIn can be an invaluable resource for finding new connections, customers, partners, and employees. One of the most powerful tools for leveraging the LinkedIn network is LinkedIn Recruiter. LinkedIn Recruiter allows you to search LinkedIn profiles using specific criteria to find qualified candidates for open roles.
Querying in Recruiter enables recruiters and sourcers to search for professionals on LinkedIn who match their hiring needs. You can use advanced search operators and filters to narrow down your search and find the best potential candidates. Queries allow you to search by skills, experience, education, location and other attributes.
In this article, we will walk through the basics of constructing effective queries in LinkedIn Recruiter to help you improve your recruiting and sourcing efforts.
Getting Started with LinkedIn Recruiter
Before you can start querying in LinkedIn Recruiter, you need access to a Recruiter account. Here are a few key things to know about Recruiter:
– Recruiter is LinkedIn’s premium talent solution designed specifically for corporate recruiting teams. It comes with several helpful tools for sourcing, engaging, and managing candidates.
– You’ll need a Recruiter license to access the platform. Licenses are sold as monthly, annual or multi-year subscriptions. There are different subscription levels based on features needed and team size.
– Users will need to be added to your company’s Recruiter account by an admin. Each user needs their own license.
– In addition to Recruiter licenses, your company will need a LinkedIn recruiter corporate account to get started. This provides access to Recruiter and LinkedIn Jobs.
Once you have access to Recruiter, you can begin searching for candidates by constructing queries. Let’s look at how queries work.
Query Basics: Key Components
When you run a search in Recruiter, you are constructing a query. Here are the key components that make up a Recruiter query:
– **Keywords**: This is the core search term (i.e. developer, accountant, nurse). Keywords form the foundation of the query.
– **Filters**: Filters allow you to narrow down your query by criteria like location, years of experience, education, company size and more.
– **Boolean search operators**: These are words like AND, OR and NOT that let you combine keywords and filters to target very specific types of candidates.
– **Search syntax**: This refers to the actual query syntax including using quotation marks, parentheses to group clauses, etc. Proper syntax is key for accurately translating your search into results.
Understanding these core components will allow you to write effective queries and have more success finding qualified candidates on LinkedIn. Next let’s walk through some examples.
Query Example 1: Simple Keyword Search
Let’s start with a basic keyword-only search:
– Keyword(s): accountant
This query will search all of LinkedIn for members with “accountant” somewhere in their profile (including position titles, skills, about section etc).
Even with one keyword, it searches through over 750 million members so you get an extremely large number of results – over 1.5 million for “accountant” alone.
While this search casts a wide net, it’s way too broad without additional filters and modifiers. Let’s look at improving the query.
Query Example 2: Add Location Filter
We can narrow down the results and find more targeted matches by adding filters.
For example, adding a location filter:
– Keyword(s): accountant
– Location: San Francisco Bay Area
This query now searches for accountants specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area. Much more targeted than searching all of LinkedIn.
We can further filter down the results using more criteria like years of experience, company size, education and more.
Query Example 3: Multiple Keywords and Filters
Here is a more comprehensive query example with multiple keywords, filters and search syntax:
“`
“financial analyst” AND CPA OR “public accountant”
Years of experience: 5-10
Company size: 500-1000 employees
Location: Chicago
Profile language: English
Current company: Fortune 500
“`
Let’s break this down:
– The keywords are “financial analyst” AND CPA OR “public accountant”. Using AND/OR helps target candidates with either or both of those titles.
– We filtered to 5-10 years of experience, company size of 500-1000, Chicago location, English profile language, and currently at a Fortune 500 company.
– Quotations around keywords groups them together as an exact phrase. Without quotes it would search each word individually.
This query narrows down the search significantly to find very targeted profiles that match the specific hiring needs.
4 Tips for Writing Effective Queries
Here are some key tips for writing queries in Recruiter that yield the best results:
1. **Use multiple keywords:** Start with 2-3 important keywords or keyphrases for the position like job titles or skills. Use AND/OR to combine them.
2. **Leverage filters:** Apply filters like years of experience, education, location, company size and more to narrow your search.
3. **Include search operators:** Operators like AND, OR, NOT, “ ” (quotations) allow you to craft precise keyword combos.
4. **Check your syntax:** Take care to use proper syntax, parenthesis, and quotation marks so LinkedIn interprets your query correctly.
Following these best practices will help you search LinkedIn effectively and find the most qualified candidates for your open roles.
Advanced Query Tactics
Let’s explore some more advanced tactics for constructing powerful queries in Recruiter:
**Group clauses with parenthesis -** Use parenthesis to group clauses together so keywords and filters are applied accurately:
(“product manager” OR “program manager”) AND “Agile” AND “software development”
**Exclude terms with NOT -** Use NOT to exclude certain keywords or companies from your search:
“software engineer” NOT “senior” NOT “manager” NOT “Google”
**Target based on profile completeness -** Search by profile completeness percentages to find well-rounded profiles:
“mechanical engineer” AND “CAD” AND profile completeness > 90%
**Search by non-current companies -** Target people who have worked at companies in the past by adding “-is:current” after the company name:
“senior product manager” AND “Google” -is:current
**Search shared connections -** Target people you share connections with using 3rd degree and beyond filters:
“director of sales” AND 3rd AND “software”
Take the time to test out these advanced tactics to create truly tailored Recruiter searches.
Save Common Queries in Folders
One of the most useful features in Recruiter is the ability to save queries for ongoing use.
Here are some ways to organize your saved queries:
– Create folders for common categories like location, department, job function, level
– Name queries clearly based on the role and criteria so they are easy to reference
– Build queries for frequents searches like “Software Engineers – San Francisco”
– Update existing queries instead of creating duplicates
This enables you to run effective searches with one click anytime you need to source candidates for recurring needs.
Export Query Results
After running a query, you can export the full results to a CSV file.
Here are some ways to leverage exported query results:
– Open the CSV in Excel to sort, filter and analyze results
– Add notes and share with hiring managers to evaluate candidates
– Upload into your ATS to track candidates and collaborate with your team
– Use as a prospect list for recruiting email and InMail outreach campaigns
Exporting your search results provides flexibility to work with the data and streamline your workflow.
Query Monitoring
The “Monitor this search” feature lets you receive email notifications when new members matching your search criteria join LinkedIn.
This is useful for:
– Ongoing needs like sourcing passive candidates for common roles
– Quickly engaging people open to new opportunities
– Staying on top of new people joining your niche or industry
Be strategic with which searches you monitor so you don’t get alerted about irrelevant new profiles.
Query Performance Tips
Here are some tips for troubleshooting queries and improving performance:
– Remove excessive filters that constrain results. Try broadening to get more results.
– Check for typos or syntax errors preventing your query from running properly.
– Break large queries into smaller components and combine with AND/OR.
– Increase keyword variations like plural vs singular or synonyms.
– Target by job title and skill combinations relevant for the role.
– If you have no results or irrelevant ones, the query likely needs reworking.
Continuously refining and optimizing your queries will allow you to get better quality results over time.
Boolean Cheat Sheet
Here is a handy cheat sheet for common Boolean operators:
| Operator | What it Does |
| AND | Returns results that match both keywords or filters connected by AND |
| OR | Returns results that match either keyword or filter connected by OR |
| NOT | Excludes results that contain the keyword or filter after NOT |
| ” “ | Wraps keywords as an exact match phrase |
Use this reference as a handy guide when constructing Boolean queries.
Query Examples by Skill
Let’s look at some specific query examples for different skills and roles:
Engineering
“`
“software engineer” AND javascript AND react NOT intern
“`
Marketing
“`
“digital marketing manager” AND seo OR “search engine optimization”
Years of experience: 8-12
“`
Sales
“`
“sales director” AND “account management” OR “business development”
Fortune 1000 AND -is:current
“`
Finance
“`
CPA OR “certified public accountant”
“financial analyst”
Chicago OR New York
Years of experience: 6-10
“`
HR
“`
“human resources manager” AND recruiter OR “applicant tracking system”
Company size: 500-2500
“`
Use these examples as templates when constructing queries for different roles at your company.
Conclusion
Constructing targeted and effective search queries is a critical skill for sourcing great talent on LinkedIn. By mastering the use of keywords, filters, Boolean operators and search syntax, you can learn to write queries that yield highly qualified, relevant candidates for any hiring need.
Leverage the tactics covered in this guide like saved queries, query monitoring, and proper syntax to constantly improve your LinkedIn search results. Take the time to test and refine your queries and they will become one of your most invaluable tools for recruiting the best professionals on LinkedIn.
