A few weeks ago, I ran a search on my free account for a plant engineering manager. I searched my first level connections, second level connections, and group connections. I received about 40 responses.

I clicked the button, "open in recruiter," to message a number of these people. LinkedIn Recruiter, no matter whether I used Boolean search or their new handy-dandy search, return fewer than half. I message my rep pointing out the discrepancy and forwarded screenshots to point out the discrepancy.

For the last six weeks, LinkedIn has been trying to shuck and jive with me and others about this issue. Today I received the hilarious message from someone representing LinkedIn Enterprise Services.

"You will always see fewer results in Recruiter than your basic LinkedIn."

In other words, "Forget everything the salesperson told you at the time they were selling the product. Search doesn't work as well in recruiter as you are told."

So I've been asking the billing department for a credit for each day I run a search and Recruiter gives me inferior results to my free account. I'm still waiting for them to respond.

I encourage you to try a similar experiment on your own and see what you find.

If you find something similar, contact your rep and complain.

I do want to give credit to the person I quote it before. At least she wrote, "With regards to Boolean search highlight single word in the search list as oppose to the full title. I appreciate you bringing this to our attention and I can confirm what you are experiencing is a known systemic issue. Our Engineering team is aware of the issue and are currently working toward a resolution, although I am unable to provide an estimated time of resolution. I can assure you they are working to get the issue fixed as soon as possible."

In other words we know of the problem, it's on our list but delivering what we sold you is not our priority.

I know I will never renew this service again.

What are your thoughts?