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LinkedIn Recruiting: Useful Life Hacks and Plugins

LinkedIn sourcing is used by recruiters of various fields. It is a convenient social network where you can find both a top manager and a developer. If you are already familiar with the standard internal search, read this article. In it, we talk about life hacks that will simplify the search.

How to Use Operators Within LinkedIn

Practice your queries in the search bar of the site itself. To make it work as efficiently as possible, remember the rules.
  1. In LinkedIn, you can use the logical operators AND, NOT, and OR at the same time.
  2. To search for an exact phrase, also use quotation marks, but straight ones (").
  3. For complex searches, mix keywords and add parentheses. Example: QA Engineer NOT (Junior OR QC) .
  4. The NOT, AND, and OR operators only work with capital letters.
  5. Boolean searches can be used in the keywords field in Recruiter and on the site itself. However, they will not work in the company, specialty, or keywords field in Sales Navigator.
  6. The "+" and "-" operators don't work on LinkedIn. Use AND and NOT instead.
  7. You don't have to enter the AND operator if you're searching for a person using multiple keywords.

How to use X-Ray

We have already talked about basic search in LinkedIn . The most interesting tool for a recruiter is external search via X-Ray queries.
Let us remind you which ones work here:
  • "site: linkedin.com/in" - searches for a profile on the site;
  • "intitle:" - searches by titles;
  • "inurl:" - searches for pages with keywords;
  • "OR" - will show pages that contain at least one of the keywords;
  • "AND" - will show pages that contain all the words from the combination. If there is a space between the words, you do not need to write the operator - it will work automatically.
Let's look at the example of searching for a QA engineer. From the skills we need the HTTP Internet protocol and Jira bug tracking. We make a request:
site:linkedin.com/in QA engineer HTTP Jira
Google gives a list of profiles for our request
Now let's try to find a Frontend developer using the "inurl:" operator . We make a request: inurl:linkedin.com/in Frontend Developer JavaScript SASS/LESS
Google gives a list of profiles by keywords

Lifehacks for X-Ray Search on LinkedIn

The main advantages of X-Ray are the ability to use complex queries of unlimited length. Let's look at a few features.
  1. If you use the "-" operator to exclude companies, it can "minus" that word throughout the profile. So if the company name matches the developer tool, it is better not to use this operator.
  2. Be creative and choose more than just standard keywords. Look at resources or ask colleagues what other names this job/tool/technology might have. Combine keywords.
  3. Recruiters looking for developers may appear in the search results. To ensure a clean selection, add "-recruiter" to each query.
  4. There is a query that helps find candidates by email in the profile. Of course, if he specified it. If not, use special plugins: Contact Out, Improver, RocketReach. But with the operator, the query looks like this: site:ru.linkedin.com/in «gmail.com» Java Developer -recruiter.
  5. Add the names of colleagues to the line so that you don't follow each other on the same search queries. Example: site:ru.linkedin.com/in PHP Developer (Anton OR Svetlana OR Kristina) -recruiter
  6. Connect to a paid plan to contact candidates immediately. A free LinkedIn profile does not allow you to send a message; you need a friend request for this. But the paid plan has so-called inmails, which you can send even to those who are not in your Connections. This is convenient not only for the recruiter, but also for the candidate: he will read the inmail in full in his mail, without going to LinkedIn.
  7. To narrow the selection, instead of the job title, write the stack or technology. You can also do it with the city, if this point is important. Examples:
  8. site:ru.linkedin.com/in Cloud Automation-recruiter
  9. site:ru.linkedin.com/in Python Developer Moscow-recruiter
Use the Custom Service Engine (CSE), a service that simplifies the search process. Read more about it here .

LinkedIn Plugins

These are extensions for the Chrome browser that add new features. However, you need to use them carefully to avoid getting blocked or banned. There are two options: use no more than two plugins or create a separate account.
LinkediLimits
Cost: free
As good as LinkedIn is, it has restrictions on contact search. And if you are too active, the site will require additional payment to remove the commercial use limit. Then you will see only 3 profiles per request. This extension removes the restrictions.
Scrapp
Cost: free with paid additional services.
A web extension that shows the verified email address of a user. It can be used on both a PC and a phone. Additionally, Skrapp saves search queries and sorts your LinkedIn activity history. The free version allows you to find up to 150 emails per month.
Contact Out
Cost: Free.
Another email opener and one of the most accurate. Contact Out has over 1 billion contacts in its database - an indispensable tool for a recruiter.
Dux-Soup
Cost: 14-day free trial, then from $14.99 per month.
This plugin is the most functional of all. It automatically interacts with candidates through personalized requests and direct messages. You simply set up filters to search for candidates and Dux-Soup will automatically visit the pages you need. The plugin confirms skills, analyzes profiles and saves them in a convenient format. You can also use it to take notes after studying a profile: from the candidate's skills to your tasks. Notes can be imported to a PC in .csv file format, which will contain links to profiles.
LinMailPro
Cost: 14-day free trial, then from $6.99 per month.
With LinMailPro, you can automatically send personal messages to LinkedIn. To do this, you need to create a template for those who knocked you as friends. Another option is to create a list of contacts using tags and write personalized messages.
LINKEDPROSPECT
Price: demo access for basic features, full access from $49 per month.
A boolean search tool. It will help you create a precise query based on keywords, the candidate’s job title, and the company. LINKEDPROSPECT is especially useful if you need a developer with a specific profile from a specific company.
Automatic boolean search query for LinkedIn
In this article, we talked about the features of X-Ray search on LinkedIn. If you don't particularly like this tool, but need a developer urgently, contact us.