Have you ever received a “Commercial Use Limit” notification when you have exceeded the 300 searches you have done in a month, even using Boolean search? LinkedIn will warn you when you have reached 90% of your 300 limit. If you exceed the limit, LinkedIn will do a reset on the 1st of the month, but will suggest that in order to increase your profile views, you should purchase Premium Business, Recruiter, or Sales Navigator.
If you are a hiring manager or recruiter without a premium account and are looking for talent, your search may stop dead in its tracks when you exceed the limit. If you are a jobseeker trying to search for networking connections who can make introductions for you, you may also exceed the limit.
Here is the good news. There is a LinkedIn hack you can perform on Google so it doesn’t count as part of your LinkedIn search. If you have not seen “How to Do a Boolean Search on LinkedIn”, start by reading this article to refresh yourself with the operator signs of AND, OR, and NOT.
Last week, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Ed Han in person in Princeton when he presented LinkedIn and he refreshed my memory on this nifty little trick.
On Google, enter the following search string of words, as an example:
site:linkedin.com/in (“greater philadelphia area”) AND (“northwestern mutual” OR “merrill lynch” OR “valley creek advisors” OR blackrock)
People’s names and LinkedIn URLs will pop up in your Google search. Note when you do this, you will see that so many people still have not taken 30 seconds to customize their URL. If you are one of those people, here is how to get rid of the gobbledygook.
Do you remember PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) from your elementary or middle school math classes for the order of operations? AND, OR, () and “” are the order of operations you see in the example above.
When there is one word like blackrock, it does not have any quotation marks. When you want to keep a set of words together like “northwestern mutual” or “merrill lynch” or “valley creek advisors”, the quotation marks need to be used.
Here is another example so you get the gist of what you need to do:
site:linkedin.com/in (“greater philadelphia area” OR “greater new york city area”) AND (R&D AND VP OR “vice president” AND “johnson & johnson” OR “johnson and johnson” OR “j and j” OR “j & j” OR j&j)
Happy searching … beyond 300!
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AUTHOR BIO
Lynne M. Williams is the Executive Director of the Great Careers Network, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides career development and networking connections for 1) job seekers in career transition, including veterans, and 2) employed and self-employed for career management.
Aside from writing keyword-focused content for ATS resumes and LinkedIn™ profiles, Lynne is writing her doctoral dissertation on LinkedIn™ for Job Seekers. She is a contributing author on “Applying to Positions” in Find Your Fit: A Practical Guide to Landing the Job You Love, along with the late Dick Bolles, the author of What Color is Your Parachute?, and is also a speaker on career topics.
