Search

Overview

Find exactly what you’re looking for.

The right person, expertise, or knowledge you’re looking for is already on LinkedIn. Now it’s even easier to find what you need to be more effective professionally:

Search by name and other distinguishing characteristics to quickly locate the person you are looking for.
Use the advanced search to target specific skill sets or find subject-matter experts.
Conduct reference searches on potential job candidates and business partners.
Quickly search your inbox for important messages and information.
Find the right jobs, knowledge, or groups to make you more productive.

Quick Search

You’ll find the search box on all pages of LinkedIn in the upper right corner. Through selections in the pulldown menu, you can search for People, Jobs, Answers, Groups, or your Inbox.

People Search

People Search in the search box lets you quickly find the person you are looking for by title,company, school, name, or other characteristics. Don’t worry about knowing the full name or exact search term. Just type in the relevant keywords and hit search. You can also quickly find one of your connections by typing their name and clicking on the suggestions that will be automatically generated.

Search Results:
Our improved search lets you easily find the right person you are looking for. You now have the option to search the entire LinkedIn membership, whether people are in your network or not. In addition, we’ve improved our search algorithms to provide you with the most relevant results.

Sorting Results:
Organize your results by clicking on the “Sort by” link on the top of the results to sort by: Relevance (the most relevant match based on your keywords and network are shown first), Relationships (First degree, second degree and groups are shown first in that order), and Relationship+Recommendations (the closest match that is one of your connections and has the most recommendations) and Keyword (the best match based solely on your query).

Viewing Results:
Clicking the “view” link allows you to choose between a basic view, an expanded view, which includes details such as work history, and a customized view. Click on “Create your own view” to customize the results based on a rich selection of fields.

Hovering over a search result will give you options to message, recommend, or add the member as a connection. You can also see what you have “in common” by clicking on the arrows next to shared connections and groups.

Saving Searches:

Clicking the “save this search” option lets you save a search and run it again at a later time. You can also choose to receive reminders over email once new members in the network match your saved search criteria.

Just click on “Saved Searches” on the top right hand corner and select one of your saved searches to run again.

Refining Searches:
Once you’ve entered in your search, you can further refine it with the options on the right side box: First Name, Last Name, Title, Company, School, and Location. There you can also opt to view members of your network only. Clicking the “Show more” button reveals further options including Industry, Groups, Language, Interests, and Join Date.

Advanced Search:

If you want to run an advanced search, click on the “Advanced” link next to the People Search box on the top right hand corner. Find the right person by entering options in the following fields:

Keyword: Enter any keywords that you are looking for in the member’s profile.
First Name: Search for a member by first name.
Last Name: Search for a member by last name.
Location: Limit your search to members either in a particular area, or willing to travel there. ZIP code search results show members in the surrounding metro area, not just that ZIP code.
Title: Search for members with a particular title. If you check “current titles only”, only members who currently hold that title will be returned. If you check “past only”, only members who used to hold that title in a previous position will be returned. Look at the advanced tips below to learn how to use Advanced Operators here.
Company: Search for members at a particular company. If you check “current companies only”, only members who are currently at that company will be returned. If you check “past only”, only members who used to be at that company will be returned. Look at the advanced tips below to learn how to use Advanced Operators here.
School: Search for members that are at or went to a particular school or university.
Industry: Searches for members in one or more primary industries. You can select more than one industry at a time.
Groups: Searches for members that belong to one or more of your groups.
Location: Limit your search to members either in a particular area, or willing to travel there. ZIP code search results show members in the surrounding metro area, not just that ZIP code.
Interested in: Search for types of members you would like to find: all members, potential employees, consultants/contractors, entrepreneurs, hiring managers, industry experts, or deal-making contacts.
Joined: Search for members who have joined LinkedIn within a specified period of time. This is perfect for a search that you will be running on a frequent basis, as it displays the more recent additions to LinkedIn who fit the criteria.
Sort by:
- Relationships and recommendations:
  - Shows results by degrees away and, within each degree, shows the most-recommended members first
- Relationships:
  - Show the people “closest” to you first (your connections are first, then people connected to your connections, then their connections, then people in your groups and so on).
- Relevance:
  - If you’ve entered a value in the top keywords field, this will return the member for whom that keyword or keywords are the most relevant.
Once you’ve returned search results, use the refinement options in the “Modify Your Search” section, and make changes without leaving the page.

Reference Search

Reference Search on LinkedIn is the best way to conduct reliable reference checks on your job candidates. Using the company name and years that the candidate worked at each company, the search results will return former colleagues who can potentially provide unbiased references.

Company Name: List your candidate’s current and former employers.
Years: Enter a starting and ending year for each company. If candidate is still employed at the company, enter the current year for the end date.

If your search returns too few or no results:
Double-check the spelling of each company name you entered.
Search with a less specific company name, for example “Apple” instead of “Apple Computer, Inc.”

Advanced Search Tips

You can use these search types to refine your results.

Quoted searches
- If you would like to search for an exact phrase, you can enclose the phrase in quotation marks (for example: “product manager”).
NOT searches (note: we also have a NOT operator that does the same)
- If you would like to do a search but exclude a particular term, type that term with a NOT immediately before it (for example: NOT computer). Your search results will exclude any profile containing that term.
OR searches
- If you would like to search for profiles which include just one of two or more terms (for example: CEO OR President) you can separate those terms with the upper-case word OR.
AND searches
- If you would like to search for profiles which include two terms (for example: manager AND director) you can separate those terms with the upper-case word AND. However, you don’t have to use AND — if you enter two terms (for example: manager director) it will assume that there is an AND between them.
Parenthetical searches
- If you would like to do a complex search (for instance, finding vice presidents or directors of divisions) you can combine terms like this: VP OR (director AND division). This will find people who have VP in their profiles, or have director AND division in their profiles.