#2 Method to Find Companies - LinkedIn Advanced Search

LinkedIn Advanced Search

LinkedIn Advanced Search is a powerful tool to find people. More importantly, it is a powerful tool to find companies that have problems you can solve or that can hire you.

In my previous post, I discussed using weak ties to find companies that can hire you.

Now, we want to find people who look, smell, and sound like you…and see where they are working.

We are going to use LinkedIn Advanced Search to query for some very specific information which includes:

Job Title – People who have the job title you currently have or desire to have
Certification – People who have certifications that are the same or similar to what you have attained
Keywords – Profiles that contain the same keywords that you use

LinkedIn Advanced Search – Job Title

For example, I want to find people in my area who have the current job title “Product Manager.”

I fill in three fields in the LinkedIn Advanced Search form:

Title – Product Manager
Set status to Current
Location to Austin, Texas Area (where I live)

I click on Search.

What appears is a list of LinkedIn profiles of people who have Product Manager as their current job title and have their LinkedIn location set to Austin, Texas Area.

These individuals live in Austin, Texas Area, but this does not mean the business they work for is located in the Austin, Texas Area.

Listen to the most recent episode

There are 2,590 profiles that meet my criteria, but the image to the left displays the first four.

Notice that the third entry is an individual whose headlines says Product Manager at Insights.

I can tell that Insights is a UK based company. I never knew that Insights had an office Austin. They may not have one. All I know right now is they have at least one employee in Austin.

How many employees does this company have in Austin?

I can find that out by going to the Insights LinkedIn company page.

On the right-hand side of their company page, you will see how you are connected. There are 462 employees on LinkedIn. How many are in Austin? Click on See All.

I clicked Add, which allowed me to type in Austin, Texas Area.

Insights has 68 employees in the Austin, Texas Area.

Does Insights have an office in the Austin, Texas Area?

I do not know, but I now know they have some kind of presence and that at least one of their employees is a Product Manager.

This may be a company with:

A satellite office
Remote employees working from home

Repeat this process for each job title variation. In this case, you might repeat using Product Management or Product Marketing.

Now, it is time to do your research on the company.

LinkedIn Advanced Search – Certifications

Next, I can perform the same type of search looking for certifications or degrees. I might search for:

Technical certifications like CCNA (Cisco) or MCP Microsoft
Human Resource Certifications like SPHR
Project Management Institute Certifications like PMP
University Degrees like MBA or PhD.
Professional Credentials like CPA or PE

Use the same process in searching for certifications as you did for job titles.

LinkedIn Advanced Search – Keywords

Finally, use keywords alone or in combination with either job titles or certifications.

For example, if you were looking for:

HR generalist role
At a manufacturing company
SPHR certification is desired

You might want to use keywords manufacturing or manufacturer, SPHR in the last name field, and HR or Human Resources in the title field.

You will need to experiment with different title variations and keywords. If you are comfortable with Boolean searches, you can add AND or OR to the search terms. You can download a LinkedIn Boolean Search Tip sheet here.

This is time-consuming, however, you will find that there are real gems to be found using LinkedIn Advanced Search. You will find companies that you had no idea had a presence in your community.

What search terms are you going to use?

Marc Miller

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