The number of “search facets” on LinkedIn’s advanced people search dialog goes up with the level of the account. But even “LinkedIn Recruiter” subscribers – those who have the maximum search power within LinkedIn – can’t search for some profile data.
For data that can only be viewed by LinkedIn members, like files attached to profiles or a Twitter ID, we are all out of luck and can’t search for it, period. However, some of the non-searchable data is on the open web… and this provides the answer to the question #1 on the Sourcing Quiz:
Any profile data that:
- cannot be searched inside LinkedIn
- is available on the open web
can be searched using Google.
Here’s an example of a very useful search, locating profiles with a link to a resume (also suggested in a reply to the quiz):
site:www.linkedin.com “location * san francisco bay area” java sql “websites * * * resume”
Here are a few more examples.
We can search for people who have worked at their current job for 2-10 years:
site:www.linkedin.com java developer “location * san francisco bay ... ,
people who have worked at two (or more) given companies:
site:www.linkedin.com “at google” “at facebook” marketing director...,
people who stopped working in 2011:
There are some useful searches on Bing as well.
There’s more. Using Google’s asterisk in searching for phrases is one other area that we can explore (next time).
Of course, these searches will only find LinkedIn members with public profiles that show more than just the basic data.
