LinkedIn Premium Engineering Input. No Joy. Workarounds

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Years ago, I was part of a team, building software for a Mass Spectrometer at Applied Biosystems. I was shocked to learn that the same device was sold for a lower price, with the altered software blocking its advanced capabilities.

Are you a Recruiter with a Premium account? My poll shows that a significant number – about 13% of Recruiters – work with Premium, 134 out of 1,061 votes. Here is what you need to know.

This information is in addition to what I have been sharing – mostly, on LinkedIn Recruiter – on the Boolean Facebook Group since Engineering contacted me in response to a post.

LinkedIn.com Premium People Search – Engineering Input

Feedback on LinkedIn.com Notes by Irina Shamaeva

Not being able to search by phrases from a person’s “about” description. “blending cutting edge technology” not finding David Galley who has the phrase in his About section.

This is an area of search that we continue to optimize to balance between the ability to match everything you want and providing an experience that is fast. With the growth of our member base (800 Million+ now) we made trade-offs between supporting all types of searches possible and the site responding in an acceptable amount of time. This is one such trade-off. We continue to make advances in our underlying technology, so we will take this as feedback for a feature you would like to see improved upon. You will find that searching for some phrases may still work as you think, such as “We have condensed decades of expertise into a series of training courses that will improve your skills, save time” should find David Galley*), it’s just that not all phrases will.

*) It does not.

You will not read this in LinkedIn Help, but we face the truth here. LinkedIn Premium misses keywords in headlines, summaries, and job descriptions in an unpredictable manner. If you source candidates using a Premium account, the above means that you randomly miss excellent prospects. 

How do you work around that?

  • Convince LinkedIn to invest in computer power. (I wish!)
  • Switch to LinkedIn Recruiter ($$$)
  • Switch to Lite or Sales Navigator ($$)
  • Use a system like SeekOut or AmazingHiring ($$)
  • Use LinkedIn aggregating tools like SalesQL or PhantomBuster ($)
  • Understand which search filters work as expected, and adjust your expectations to the current algorithm. 🙂 Search wide, collect results and filter
  • Research deeper to power up your  LinkedIn Boolean
  • Master Google X-Ray; it can do wonders!

The above also means that others may no longer find you by your favorite keywords. (That affects all of us, no matter what account.) Run some test searches and edit your profile to fix that (do not ask me how!)

Please join me for a completely reworked webinar on January 11-12, 2023,

LinkedIn Solved,

addressing the challenges of sourcing talent with a Premium account. We will cover X-Ray in detail. It may be useful for other account holders as well.

 

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