LinkedIn has not failed to create UI/UX that doesn’t do what we expect it to do. It’s been a Sourcer’s delight to figure out the “ins” of LinkedIn and, in particular, LinkedIn Recruiter (which I extensively use for sourcing) over the years. To add to the confusion, LinkedIn often makes “helpful” adjustments to its software, and what it exactly does keeps shifting. LinkedIn Recruiter (LIR) is especially misleading in its hidden “helpful” semantic interpretations of our searches (none of that stuff is documented). There have always been bugs, too – worse than we can expect from a corporation that has the resources they do.
So many Recruiters rely on the expensive product for Sourcing, while missing matching results and getting non-matching results due to the way it works.
While LinkedIn seems to care about the UX, they seem to do the wrong thing a lot of the time. Here are just some unhelpful things LIR users experience:
- Gigantic search dialog – hard to find each filter
- Filters moving around the screen (move to the left) as soon as you start using them
- A mere space added to a search field changes the search (big time!): LinkedIn Recruiter: Not WYSIWYG
- Job title search looks for “synonyms” you don’t need: LinkedIn Recruiter: More Confusion
- As you scroll through the search results, you are likely missing some – A LinkedIn Recruiter Flaw You Should Know About
- Alumni search for graduation years doesn’t do what you think it does: The Matter of Time in Alumni Search
- When you search, then save a profile to a project, that overwrites the saved search for the project (it’s a new “feature”).
Free and Business LinkedIn users have features that LIR doesn’t – LinkedIn Operators: One More and a Tip Sheet.
Are you a LinkedIn Recruiter user? Check out the online class “Mastering LinkedIn Recruiter” coming up on Wednesday, February 13th. (If you miss it, we will have a recording available at the same link).
If you are confused with your search results in Recruiter, it’s not you, it’s them! Let us show you ‘what’ it does while searching (not what you think it does!) and how to search “right”. LinkedIn’s documentation doesn’t talk about this, and customer support, unfortunately, is unaware of these search behaviors. (Sometimes we wonder if anyone at LinkedIn is aware of what we are discovering!) Seating is limited.
Our webinars include the materials and video-recording for you to keep and one month of support on the topic (an excellent value by itself; I don’t think anyone else provides that).