Source LinkedIn easier with Peopletoucher

More and more it has become apparent for the general public that LinkedIn is a great resource for more things than just your digital Rolodex. Recruiters and B2B Salespeople for example have been quite active on LinkedIn to find new candidates and opportunities.

LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Recruiter for large enterprises and recruiting firms, yet the advanced search function (the free search tool available to everyone else) has always been watered down in order to appeal to a variety of backgrounds outside of business development and recruiting.There is of course now the new and improved advance search but then there is another issue if you do not have a business account. The amount of saved searches is, to say the least, highly limited. With the Peopletoucher Search Engine I teach all of my trainees, whether they be f.i. corporate recruiters, agency recruiters or HR professionals, how to source LinkedIn via Peopletoucher and save unlimited searches!

Before you begin, rev up your connection count. You only have access to contacts within 3 degrees of separation to you, so each connection you add increases your searching ability.

Titles or Keywords?

Resist the temptation to dump a few words into the Keywords section of advanced search, and instead focus on the Title section. The Peopletoucher Search engine expands on this, and creates a complete Title Search Term section, for you to add and subtract terms in an inventory format.

“Current” or “Current and Past”?

If you’re searching LinkedIn manually, you’ll notice a drop down under Titles and Companies — leave this set to “Current”. Selecting “Current and Past” will return matches outside of the scope of your search, if you’re simply looking for someone with the right requirements, right now.

Search for current on Peopletoucher

OR, AND, What?

The searching methodology is to put lots of title search terms separated by “OR”; you’ll need to type “term1 OR term2…” etc. Yes, “OR” must be capitalized. The Peopletoucher Search Engine automatically adds OR between the terms you select, saving you time.

Which Industry?

If you really need a candidate that has experience in let’s say the Chemical industry or other specific demands from either your company or your client, you can fill it in here otherwise I suggest you skip it.

Which level? Manager, VP, or C-Level?

LinkedIn unfortunately doesn’t organize profiles according to common corporate titles, and they certainly aren’t going to ask each user when filling out their profile, so in the meantime you have two options to narrow down contacts by rank: Using both OR & AND operator as well as some brackets, you could create a statement like this in the Title field:

((VP OR manager) AND (interactive OR online OR web))

This would return VP or Manager-level contacts with interactive, online or web in their title. Or the simpler way is the RankFilter tool in the Peopletoucher Search Engine.

Rather than manually type out each title, the boolean entry is automated and include variations like VP, Vice President, SVP, for each rank.

Saving and Sharing?

LinkedIn lets you save 3 searches and receive emails whenever new matches are found. The automatic emails can come in handy (think of it like a Google News Alert for LinkedIn contacts) but the interface makes it cumbersome to modify searches or make new ones based on existing terms. The Peopletoucher Search Engine supports saving unlimited searches for re-use, sharing the settings through links, and saving to f.i. Google Bookmarks.

Some words of Netiquette

There are some simple things to remember when using LinkedIn to approach possible candidates or leads:

• Introduce yourself with an email, don’t send just the standard invite;
• Check if a job candidate that you want to approach has their contact option “career opportunities” active and remember that this was / is a default setting so it could still mean a do not approach;
• Then check how long someone has been with their current company, less than a year? Do not approach is my advise;
• Really read their profile to see if it is a good match with your job opportunity;
• NEVER assume that your assessment is the right one, ask if they are open to a new career opportunity and then tell them that you feel that you have a suitable opportunity and if they would be so kind to contact you if they are interested;
• DO send a link to the profile you have in mind seeing as humans tend to be curious and this opportunity could be just what they were waiting for but didn’t realize yet (you did seeing as you are great at your recruiter job right
• ALWAYS give your contact details in the mail, do not make the mistake that they will go to your profile and figure it out on their own. Humans are also lazy and you want to make a sale not the other way around;
• Be polite, friendly and always phrase your mail in an asking manner because never forget: “Assumption is the mother of all F#*ckups ☺

Now go on and give it a try and let me know if you feel it makes a positive difference in your sourcing and sales on LinkedIn!