Last week’s webinar was all about how Recruiters can use LinkedIn to be found by and find candidates. I have spoken at length many times before about searching with LinkedIn, so for this webinar, I decided to look at some of the alternative ways of navigating around LinkedIn. I also took some time to talk about my own work at Intelligence Recruitment Software and showed some of the ways Intelligence can be used to get more from LinkedIn.

Given that the recruitment industry spends a great deal of time searching LinkedIn, it very often does not occur to us that by equal measure, peoples profiles are being found. It seems sensible therefore to set an objective of being found is just as important as finding people.

Being Found:

The LinkedIn search is unusual compared to a search engine in that it seems to give priority to the number of times a keyword appears on a person’s profile. Searching for the keyword Recruiter gives nearly 500,000 results. The first result on my list gives a profile that features the word recruiter over 1000 times. By simply using the keyword you want to be found for repeatedly, you will put yourself towards the top of the search results. Search LinkedIn for the phrase “Recruitment Software” and I hope that my profile will be on the first page of your results.

LinkedIn actually creates two profiles for each account. One is the profile that you can access by logging into and searching through LinkedIn. The other is a public profile that can be seen by anyone and is indexed by search engines. It is important that this profile is also optimized and contains the information you want to have there. Given that LinkedIn often hides contact details, it seems sensible to ensure that contact details are contained in several different sections of the profile.

Linkedin Public Profile

The LinkedIn public profile allows you to create a vanity URL. This means that you can create your own URL and share this on emails and your own web site. LinkedIn even gives you the HTML code to create a button to link to your profile, such as this.

Assuming that you have optimized your profile, how do you tell if it has been successful?

This link will give you information about the number of times your page is looked at and appears in searches. While looking at this page it is useful to consider how you appear when you are looking at other people’s profiles. Looking at LinkedIn settings gives you the option to select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile. I’d recommend that this is set to Name and Headline. In this way, there is a reasonable chance that some of those profiles you are looking at will also visit your profile page.

I have spoken before about the search and advanced search features on LinkedIn. Following on from this, I thought I would consider some of the other ways in which you may be able to discover useful profiles. Once you find one profile that looks close to the type of profile you are interested in, this can be used as a starting point to find many more profiles.

Finding People:

I have a range of LinkedIn URLs that can be modified to search based on this initial profile. To use them you will need to know the LinkedIn ID for the profile you wish to start from. To get an ID you can simply look at the URL in the full LinkedIn profile and it will be there. For example, my LinkedIn profile is http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=3869500 and so my ID is 3869500.

This used to be a feature that LinkedIn charged for. However, they now provide this for free on all searches, Run a search and below each name will be a link saying Similar.

The URL to find profiles similar to mine is
http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?viewType=sim&sId=3869500

By changing the ID you can change this for any LinkedIn profile.

Again in the Linkedin Settings, you can choose to allow anyone to see your connections. Should you have a first or second-degree connection that chooses to open their connections, then by clicking on the number of connections shown on their profile brings you to this page
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/connections?id=3869500
(again replace the ID)

Similar profiles:

A friend of mine, Balazs Paroczay (@thebalazs and https://thebalazs.com/) recently wrote a blog about another way to search connections of 1st or 2nd-degree connections.

Try this URL
http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?viewType=cc&ccId=3869500

Again, I have used my own ID even though I have not opened up my connections for others to view. However, there is actually a very good reason for me to have done this. I find one of the most useful applications of this URL to be able to search my own connections. By using this method I have a different set of criteria that form the connections page. Interestingly, it also appears to be giving different results even for quite basic searches. It would appear that one of these searches has a few bugs and so for this reason, having several ways to achieve similar things seems particularly useful.

If you find these techniques useful, please let me know. I am currently planning my next webinar and am grateful for all feedback. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and share this blog with colleagues and friends on Twitter, Facebook, and any other channel.

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