LinkedIn is a powerful platform for networking and searching for jobs, business opportunities, and connections. With over 740 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for professionals in every industry. One of the most useful features of LinkedIn is its robust search function, which allows you to find people, companies, jobs, groups, and more using relevant keywords. However, searching for two words together requires using a few simple search operators to get the most targeted and useful results.
Use Quotation Marks for Exact Match Search
The simplest way to search for two words together on LinkedIn is to put them in quotation marks. For example, searching for “digital marketing” (with quotes) will only return results that contain that exact phrase. This is useful when you want to find profiles or jobs with a very specific skillset or job title. Without the quotation marks, results containing just “digital” or just “marketing” separately would also appear.
Some examples of using quotation marks for an exact match search on LinkedIn:
- “Social media manager” – Find profiles with this exact job title
- “Apple Inc” – Search for the specific company name
- “Content creator” – Profiles that have this skill listed
Quotation marks ensure you only get results containing both words next to each other and ignores results with just one of the words. This focuses your search and improves relevance.
Use the AND Operator for Flexible Multi-word Search
If you want your search to be a little more flexible, use the AND operator to require results to contain two words but not necessarily right next to each other. This widens the net a bit to return results that may have your search terms in different parts of the profile, job posting, etc.
Simply put AND between the two words like this:
- marketing AND analytics
- social media AND strategy
- design AND thinking
The AND operator will search for both terms but does not require them to be an exact phrase match. This can help you find more diverse results when you want pages that contain all your keywords but not necessarily together.
When to Use AND
Using AND is ideal when you want to:
- Broaden your results to profiles or jobs containing two skills/interests but not necessarily as a phrase
- Find people who have experience in two broadly defined disciplines (e.g. marketing AND analytics)
- Search for companies that specialize in two different products/services
The AND operator is more flexible but still narrows down your query to only results containing both keywords.
Use Boolean Search Operators for Advanced Options
In addition to AND, LinkedIn supports two other Boolean operators for advanced multi-word search – OR and NOT. Here’s a quick overview of how they work:
OR – Returns results with either word
The OR operator will return results that contain either of your search terms. This is useful when you want to broaden your search to profiles or jobs that have one skill/interest or another.
For example:
- manager OR director – Profiles with either title
- social media OR marketing – Broaden search for skills
- design OR advertising – Profiles focused on either discipline
NOT – Omits results with excluded term
Adding NOT before a word will omit any results containing that word. This lets you exclude certain results from your query.
For example:
- marketing NOT manager – Marketing profiles but exclude managers
- design NOT advertising – Design profiles but exclude advertising
- engineer NOT software – Engineers excluding software engineers
Search Techniques and Tips
Here are some additional tips for effectively searching two words on LinkedIn:
- Order matters – “manager marketing” gets different results than “marketing manager”
- Capitalization doesn’t matter – “digital Marketing” is the same as “Digital marketing”
- Use parentheses to group complex queries – (social media OR marketing) AND manager
- Fewer words get better results – “Marketing manager” better than “Experienced marketing manager”
- Check keyword density in profiles to optimize your own profile for search
- Analyze your target audience’s words/phrases and use those in your profile
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Keyword Search
Make sure you optimize your own LinkedIn profile to be discoverable for key multi-word searches. Here are some tips:
- Your headline is prime real estate – Include key skills and titles
- Use keywords naturally in your summary and about sections
- Add multi-word key skills – analytics, social media, etc.
- Include keywords in your experience descriptions
- Get endorsements from colleagues for key skills
- Publish long-form posts using relevant terms to boost your visibility
Doing SEO for your profile will help you show up in more searches and reach your target audience.
LinkedIn’s Recruiter Search Offers More Options
If you have a Recruiter license on LinkedIn, you get access to more advanced search functions like Boolean modifiers, proximity searches, field-specific searches, and more. Some examples of powerful Recruiter search strings:
- “account manager” AND San Francisco – Profiles with that title near San Francisco
- developer OR engineer NOT intern – Developers or engineers excluding interns
- Silicon Valley w/10 startup – People in Silicon Valley within 10 words of “startup”
Recruiter allows creating complex and customized keyword searches to surface the most relevant profiles for your hiring needs.
Conclusion
Mastering how to search for two words together on LinkedIn unlocks more focused and relevant results for your job search, recruiting, business development, and networking needs. Quotation marks find an exact match phrase, while AND requires both terms without order. Boolean operators like OR and NOT add flexibility to include or exclude results. Optimize your own profile with keywords to improve visibility. With the right search techniques, you can turn LinkedIn’s ocean of profiles and postings into a targeted pool of opportunities.