The right person you’re looking for is already on LinkedIn. The key is in knowing how to build an effective search that will help you find prospective candidates with the skills, experience, and qualifications required to fill the position. Search for what people do, not just words they use.

1. Talent Solutions Best Practices
Advanced Search
The right person you’re looking for is already on LinkedIn. The key is in knowing how
to build an effective search that will help you find prospective candidates with the
skills, experience, and qualifications required to fill the position. Search for what
people do, not just words they use.
Refinement Filters
1. Keyword Search 1
Review the job description and build your search string by entering key words and
phrases that you’d expect to find in a highly qualified candidate's profile into the
appropriate advanced search fields. Keyword searches will search all text in the
profile. Adding Boolean modifiers (quotes, parentheses, AND, OR, and NOT,) can 2
help pinpoint candidates with the requisite skills and experience.
2. Talent Pipeline
The Talent Pipeline filters allow you to search for people in (or not in) your pipeline
who are with or without messages, notes, tags, reviews, resumes, projects, or profile
activity.
3. Custom Filters
If you’ve used any of the filters below and want to continue using those same filters
for additional searches, you can save the filter as “custom” and access it again later.
3
4. Additional Filters
The top 5 for each filter will show by default. Select “Show more…” to view the top
10 and add additional criteria to the input box in the filter. For example, in this 4
picture, you could choose Greater New York and enter London into the input box to
look for profiles in those two locations.
Advanced Search Approaches
While the search filters are handy, there are other ways to approach your search that
will help you uncover hidden talent.
Use Talent Mining Techniques:
• Indirect: Ask your hiring manager for the names of several people who would
be a great fit – regardless of their availability. Then look up their profiles in
Recruiter and click the Similar Profiles option to find up to 100 members who
have similar background. You can also check out People Also Viewed for
more indirect leads.
• Implicit: Make assumptions. If you’ve used keywords in your search and
you’re finding common groups, try removing some of your keywords but
keep the groups checked. This will help you find members who have the
same skills, just not the actual terms on their profiles.
©2012 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

2. Talent Solutions Best Practices
• Conceptual: Use similar terms or ones that other companies use that mean the same thing.
• Natural Language: Use action words that people “do” in their jobs, such as: manage, report, oversee, verify, crunch, code,
and so on.
Join Groups
Groups allow LinkedIn members to discover, share, and participate in a number of professional conversations happening in their
industry and areas of interest.
• Identify target groups on LinkedIn by searching according to required skill or industry.
• After you run a search in Recruiter, select the All Groups filter to identify additional groups that are relevant to your search.
• Join open groups without approval by any group moderator.
• Encourage hiring managers to join groups in cases where Recruiters are not granted membership by the group moderator.
• If you’ve reached your 50 group limit, follow open group content.
Use Research Tools
LinkedIn has different tools that you can use as part of the research process.
• Use LinkedIn Skills to find related terms, professionals in your network, target companies, and relevant groups.
• Use LinkedIn Company Pages to determine Target companies.
• Use Career Explorer to reverse-engineer your candidate career by entering the field of study as well as required degree and
industry experience.
©2012 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.