The LinkedIn hidden search operators are back! Nobody knows for how long they will work this time (we enjoyed them for a year and a half a while ago). But they offer any LinkedIn user, whether basic or paid, significant searching power and an important filter unavailable with any subscription.
LinkedIn never documented the operators, apart from the less-useful firstname:, lastname:, title:, company:, and school: (all achievable via the advanced dialog). Nobody has any idea who had implemented the other ones. But the code came alive again.
The operators were featured in Nathan Palin’s Bellingcat’s Invitation Is Waiting For Your Response: An Investigative Guide To LinkedIn.
You will find some again-working search examples earlier on my blog, posted when I was discovering the operators. Here are more examples:
- headline:”open to remote” (this is a favorite because there is no “official” way to search for headlines – the most important profile parts!)
- skills:”(java python “software development”)
- spokenlanguage:italian
- startyear:2010 (start school)
- endyear:2010 (end school)
- geo:”mountain view”
- industry:94 (aviation; note that the codes have moved from LinkedIn Developer site to Microsoft’s.)
- seniority:6 (director; codes)
- profilelanguage:de
- yoe:8
You can combine the operators and any search terms.
It very well may be that there are other operators to be discovered. Profiles have tons of data, of which we can search only part. But we can search better while the discovered operators last. 🙂
Please check out our class on some OSINT advanced (often, also hidden) features of LinkedIn, Google, and Custom Search Engines –
Advanced Google and LinkedIn for #OSINT Research.