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.

You can have a conversation with ChatGPT and talk it into creating just the outcome you want. Keep correcting it until you like what it writes. The following prompt is a result of our conversation:

Prompt:

I will give you a job description and you will write an email trying to engage a candidate. Start with their potential interests in career growth, then present the opportunity. Outline the benefits and potential, be convincing. Use industry terminology. Be brief, do not use unnecessary words. Be friendly. Use call-to-action, add a sense of urgency.
Job: <pasted from Enterprise Software Sales Consultant>

ChatGPT:
Dear [Candidate],

I hope this email finds you well. I am reaching out to you on behalf of [Company], a fast-growing AI start-up that is leading the way in the maintenance supply chain for aircraft fleets. We are seeking an experienced Enterprise Software Sales Consultant with a strong background in selling to the Airlines/Aviation industry to join our team.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to work with C-level executives, negotiate complex agreements, and close deals while being a key part of our growing team. We are looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience selling enterprise software in the Airlines/Aviation industry and a proven track record of closing deals larger than $1-2M. Experience with AI or advanced analytics, an interest in working at a start-up, and excellent interpersonal skills are all highly desirable.

This is a unique opportunity to join a cutting-edge company and be a part of our success. The position is initially part-time with the potential to become full-time. All candidates must be US citizens and this is a remote position.

If you are interested in learning more about this exciting opportunity, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [Your Email] or [Your Phone Number] as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you and discussing how you can join our team.

Best regards,
[Your Name]

The email sounded generic. To personalize it, I added a few sentences about a candidate and asked it to tweak the outreach. It started sounding like this:

– As a seasoned sales professional with an MBA and experience as a VP of Sales, I believe you may be interested in an exciting opportunity with our company.
– As a full-time VP of Sales at a similar company, you bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table. If you are looking to relocate to San Francisco from New York and take your career to the next level, this is a unique opportunity to join a cutting-edge company and be a part of our success.

Phrase your request, paste your JD, your candidate qualities, iterate until you like it, edit the outcome (Grammarly is recommended), and email away!

ChatGPT refuses to access the Internet. Yet you can use it to generate lists of target companies for your job requisitions. Generating Boolean search for LinkedIn is not a problem, but the Chat can do it also. The examples relate to my current sourcing projects.

Project #1. “US companies selling saas to airlines.”

While Google would point you to company lists in any industry, it cannot yet respond to this (my current project): .

ChatGPT:
(Sabre OR (Amadeus) OR (Travelport) OR (IBS Software) OR (Navitaire) OR (SITA) OR (Rockwell Collins) OR (Hilton Software) OR (Farelogix) OR (TravelSky) OR (ATPCO) OR (AeroData) OR (Honeywell Aerospace) OR (Innovata) OR (Jeppesen) OR (FlightAware) OR (FlightStats) OR (ARINC) OR (Datalex) OR (New Skies Satellites) OR (Lufthansa Systems) OR (Airline Business Solutions) OR (Data Management Inc.) OR (ITA Software) OR (Logical Vision) OR (Astute Solutions) OR (Aviatech) OR (FlexAir Software) OR (Tripl) OR (Inflight Dublin) OR (OpenJaw Technologies) OR (Flightwise) OR (Skyware Technologies) OR (Mercator) OR (AFRA) OR (CRS Technologies) OR (Talari) OR (Sable Air) OR (Travel Technology Interactive)).

Project #2. “Companies creating software in PHP using payment gateways such as Paypal and Stripe.”

Tough! It tells me it cannot use the web. It keeps apologizing. But I can rephrase the request, and it will be fulfilled. I recall it knows about products sold (see #1). How about “Companies that sell PHP-based software and include payments via PayPal or Stripe?” Here you go:

(Invoice Ninja) OR (WooCommerce) OR (Magento) OR (OpenCart) OR (PrestaShop) OR (Zen Cart) OR (osCommerce) OR (Avactis) OR (CubeCart) OR (CS-Cart) OR (Magento) OR (OpenCart) OR (PrestaShop) OR (Zen Cart) OR (osCommerce) OR (Avactis) OR (CubeCart) OR (CS-Cart) OR (QuickBooks Online) OR (Zoho Invoice) OR (Xero) OR (FreshBooks) OR (Wave) OR (KashFlow) OR (Zoho Books) OR (SliQ Invoicing) OR (PaySimple) OR (Billings Pro) OR (Blesta) OR (ClientExec) OR (HostBill) OR (WHMCS) OR (BoxBilling) OR (BillingBoss) OR (Ploi) OR (Client Portal) OR (HostGator) OR (Invoice Ninja) OR (QuickBooks Online) OR (Zoho Invoice) OR (Xero) OR (FreshBooks) OR (Wave) OR (KashFlow) OR (Zoho Books) OR (SliQ Invoicing) OR (PaySimple)

This is one simple sourcing productivity example. But I believe our industry, and others, are going to be hugely affected by the new AI as soon as 2023. I am excited!

Check out my new AI Image Gallery!

The latest AI tools are fascinating! I am losing count of their uses that pop up. I will post more practical content soon; this post is to share a fun exercise. Here is what I did:

I repeatedly asked ChatGPT to describe “a nonsensical image,” adding very simple prompts, like asking the image to be in an office environment, or add colors. I repeated five times. Each time I copied the output – about a paragraph – and fed it as a prompt to MidJourney.

Here are the five images (one above, four below) generated in one session – a dialog with ChatGPT – in two minutes, from the same one-sentence description and with only slight additional modification requests. I did not “reject” any images; all seemed worth glancing over and appreciating their diversity. Had I used MidJourney parameters (I did not), the outputs would also vary more in colors, textures, lights, degree of “realism,” etc.

(Who gets credit for these images is a complicated issue.)

Here is a wild thought. Not only will there be job titles like “AI Prompt Creators” (people who describe images to be fed to text-to-image algorithms) in numbers. There will be “AI Pre-Prompt Designers.” The role will:

• Know what to tell ChatGPT for it to create a prompt for an AI drawing program to draw in a desired way (I promise to come back and improve this sentence.)
• Hand-edit the prompt if necessary.
• Feed it to an AI drawing program.

These positions will require both creative and analytic minds.

My advantage for the toy experiment was, of course, that I had no specific outcome in mind. When I do, it is hard to tame any of these AI systems, either content-creating or drawing. There is a lot to learn. But only imagine the possible outcomes.

People are absent-minded. They forget to put an end date on a previous job on their LinkedIn profiles when they move to the next. Unclosed past positions are responsible for the majority of false positives in LinkedIn people search.

LinkedIn could fix it by allowing to search for the top position, but there never was such a filter. From my dialog with LinkedIn Engineering based on LinkedIn Recruiter Notes I had shared:

The “last position” feedback, the team is exploring solutions in this space. The main reason we don’t do this today is that many members hold multiple positions at one. Oftentimes, one position is their main 9-5 job and another can be advisory / volunteer / board position, etc. As a result, if we only enable “most recent position” search, we risk not including many members for their main 9-5 jobs that might be a great fit for recruiters.

We can advise only so many potential candidates about closing past positions and are unable to trigger a major LinkedIn profile update campaign. But we can try to eliminate the “absent-minded” members from search, finding more matches and fewer non-matches (and discriminating against some people with unclosed past positions, but we will search for them separately).

An average professional progresses through their career, gaining seniority. So, if you search for an engineer, use engineer NOT manager to eliminate managers with unclosed past positions. For managers, use manager NOT director, etc.

Alternatively, exclude higher levels of seniority in LinkedIn Recruiter, for example, with NOT seniority:6 (which means NOT director). Exclude company types also, for which you do not search.

If you are searching for company employees, exclude companies of other sizes and similar companies with NOTs in the Company field.

You get 17% fewer results for a search for Engineering Manager at Google if you search like this, eliminating companies:

(When these companies are included, we will find people who left Google for other companies or came from them to Google. So we should go back and find that “correct” half separately.)

Removing Seniority higher than Manager 

eliminates another 24% – mostly, correctly (though it does happen that a Manager goes back to an individual contributor role because they like to code):

I know, it is unintuitive. But it will save time.

Join me for a fully updated class

LinkedIn Recruiter Mastery

on Wednesday, December 21st. We will go over best search practices and reveal the actual functionality of the search filters, based on the new inside knowledge from the  Engineering, plus, cover 20+ hidden search operators that LinkedIn does not know about.

ChatGPT is is a fascinating tool, utilizing AI at a level not seen before. It is not only going to change how people Google but will affect job functions and ruin software. Apparently, it can write essays, poems, fictional short stories, software code, create, and solve quizzes. (What are some other use cases have you thought of?) It works in many languages.

As I am preparing for the upcoming free Healthcare Sourcing webinar for Recruiters, I have thought of a few applications – not necessarily industry-dependent:

1. Create an email template to potential candidates:

2. Learn how to interview:

3. Write a job post:

4. Research:

5. More research:

6. More research:

However, when I asked ChatGPT to look for candidates matching a job description, it crashed! Industry still needs humans to source.

Please register and join us at a SeekOut-sponsored free

Healthcare Sourcing webinar for Recruiters

on December 13th at 8 AM PST. (More about it.)

And I think this one is just perfect!

A poem about non-responding candidates 
Darkness gathers o’er the land
As recruiters seek their next hire,
But silence reigns where once was fire
As candidates fail to take the stand.
They once were eager, full of hope
But now they’ll not return a call,
Their silence speaks, a damning toll
On recruiters who must now cope.
Alas, the job hunt is a game
Of cat and mouse, of hide and seek,
The candidates’ indifference, a leak
In recruiters’ plans, a bitter shame.
But still they persevere, undaunted
For in the end, a great hire will be found
Their persistence pays, their dreams abound
As they triumph over the non-responding.

A skilled Sourcer knows search principles and techniques and can work in any industry. But at a closer look, each sector has its own advantages and challenges when it comes to sourcing.

Few Healthcare professionals are online, even fewer are on LinkedIn, and reaching out is challenging. But in Healthcare, you have sources of potential candidates such as:

• US State License Registries
• Certifications – Board and other
• NPI Database
• Databases such as Doximity and Healthgrades (which you can X-Ray)
• Online directories, including insurance
• Large Hospital sites

I was recently sourcing Physicians in West Palm Beach Florida, and the amount of online data turned out to be overwhelming. The license verification site has detailed data, including board certifications and personal email addresses. A Data Portal has a full physician database of 1.5M+. The challenge was to get “less data,” filtering it to match the requirements and cross-referencing to get additional employment background.

Other states and specialties may not be as sourcer-friendly as Florida, but there is an abundance of data sources for you to find in almost every case. If it helps, here is a

• State Boards of Nursing Websites List

When sourcing, you either cross-reference information “by hand” – more technically challenging, but customizable – or use a paid aggregator like SeekOut, which collects and cross-references professional data for you ahead of time. (Or you can do both!).

You are invited to an advanced

SeekOut-Sponsored (Free) Healthcare Sourcing/Recruiting Webinar 

In my presentation, I will review Healthcare use cases from my practice for extracting, utilizing, and cross-referencing data from non-LinkedIn sources such as license registries. A brief new SeekOut Healthcare Sourcing package demo will follow.
Who should attend: Healthcare Recruiters, Talent Acquisition professionals, and everyone interested in sourcing ideas and techniques.

P.S. You can search for Healthcare professionals by job titles and locations (and discover useful sites along the way) using this Custom Search Engine:

Guest Post from Talent Sourcer Mike Santoro

Perhaps the most famous “pair” in recruiting and sourcing search strategy is finding candidates based on matching their “Current Job Title(s)” at “Current Company(s).” Let’s call this a “Pair of Aces.”

In this article, I’m going to show two new ways to search (on LinkedIn and via X-ray) for a NEW search combination pair:

“Past Job Title(s)” at “Past Company(s)”

I will discuss why and how this “old pair” is a powerful “new search tactic” that opens many possibilities for sourcing high-quality matching candidates for your hiring managers.

This post will teach you this new “hack.” I hope it will also inspire your creativity.

(Note, if you are wondering what is “new” about this method, it’s the “at.”  We can search for past job titles and past companies, but not for people who have a specific title at a particular company in the past.  This post shows you two ways to execute this:

1) Linkedin.Com Basic/LinkedIn Recruiter/Sales Nav/Recruiter Lite

2) Google X-ray

“For Love of Sourcing and Sourcers” –Mike Santoro ❤)

On any given weekday, you will find every Recruiter/Sourcer playing this time-tested “present pair” to win the hearts of hiring managers.  It goes something like this:

The Hiring Manager says to the Recruiter/Sourcer:

 “We need to hire an X. Please find me candidates currently working as an X and who currently works at one of our direct competitors.  Oh, and if that direct competitor happens to be a similar size company as ours, that would be even better.”

This example is oversimplified, as there are often nuances based on requirements, skills, and experiences.  But generally, a target list of job title variations and similar companies/industries is preferred in the candidate’s most recent work history.

Therefore, Recruiters and Sourcers often try to “build a hand” of Candidates with the following:

A Pair of Aces –

“Current Job Title(s)” at “Current Company(ies)”

“Current Job Title(s)” AND “Current Company(ies)”

Searching for a “Pair of Aces” is conveniently accessible with LinkedIn Search filters, but securing the interest from enough “Ace Pair” candidates is not always easy.  Therefore, recruiters naturally seek the next best option, find candidates with at least one ace “Current Job Title(s)” OR “Current Company(s)”.  These candidates have the desired job title but not the right company or industry experience.  Or, they work for the right kind of company or industry but in a different role.

The problem is such candidates are only a “half-match.” Rather than a more perfect match “Pair of Aces” we settle for playing “Ace High” candidate hands. We falsely limit our options. Then we often go to great lengths to persuade Hiring Managers that the “Ace high” (half-match) candidate is a “winning hand.” We make large bets on other skills and experiences and try to prove the candidates can be a fit. And while these bets pay off sometimes, more often the result is disappointed hiring managers and a more challenging hiring process. It’s our job to deliver to our company/client’s hiring managers the best candidates we can find that most closely align with the desired target profile.

I want to inspire you to consider alternative “next-best” hands that may be better to play than “Ace High.”

Like a “Pair of Kings!”

That is “Past Job Title(s) ” at “Past company(s)”

And what if that pair opened up the possibility of creating all kinds of other creative winning hand searches:

• Two Pair
• Three of A Kind
• Straight
• Full House
• Straight Flush

More on these combinations later.

First, how to execute this Search Hack in 2 steps:

Step 1-

In the primary top general search bar of LinkedIn.com (or in the keywords search field in Linkedin Recruiter, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter Lite), insert this combination in double quotes:

“[Past Title] at [Past Company]”

I.e.,

“Software Engineer at Microsoft”

LinkedIn.com:

LinkedIn Recruiter:

Step 2 –

Remove -[Past Company] from the Company Search Filter (this will remove current employees and keep those who previously worked there).

LinkedIn.com:

LinkedIn Recruiter:

Your results are a “pair of Kings.” Former Software Engineers at Microsoft (almost exclusively).  Which may be better than only “Ace High.”

One Pair of Kings –

i.e.

Former Software Engineers at Microsoft

But wait, there are now so many interesting new ways to search!

(note: there are many other powerful use cases.  These examples are to inspire you to see examples of what is possible.  i.e., build complex talent mapping lists or conduct competitive intelligence exercises)

Two Pairs –

(Current Job Title at Current Company) + (Past Job Title at Past Company)

i.e.,

Current Software Engineers or Developers at Amazon + Formerly a Software Engineer at Microsoft

Three-of-a-Kind –

(Past Job Title 1 at Past Company 1) OR (Past Job Title 1 at Past Company 2) OR (Past Job Title 1 at Past Company 3)

i.e.,

Formerly a Java Developer at Apple OR Google OR Meta

Straight –

(Current Job Title) + (Past Job Title 1 at Past Company) AND (Past Job Title 2 at Past Company)

i.e.,

Current Engineering Managers + Formerly a Software Engineer at Microsoft AND Formerly Software Engineer II at Microsoft

Full House –

(Current Job Title at Current Company) + (Past Job Title 1 at Past Company) OR (Past Job Title 2 at Past Company) OR (Past Job Title 3 at Past Company)

Current Software Engineers OR Developers at Google who were formerly a Software Engineer at Microsoft OR a Developer at Microsoft OR an SDE at Microsoft

Straight Flush –

(Current Company) + (Past Title 1 at Current Company) AND (Past Title 2 at Current Company) AND (Past Title 3 at Current Company)

i.e.,

Currently at Microsoft and has been an Engineer, Engineer II, and a Manager (all at Microsoft)

For using Linkedin Recruiter, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter lite, follow the same pattern as with basic.  The advantage is you will not have such strict limits on the size of your OR strings.

You can also do this search via Google X-Ray.  One advantage to using X-Ray is that you can use specific date ranges too at specific companies with specific titles:

1. Past Company with Specific Date Range

i.e., worked at Amazon between 2014-2016 but does not currently work for Amazon

site:linkedin.com/in “Amazon graphic” “amazon * * jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec 2014..2016” -intitle:Amazon -inanchor:Amazon

2. Past Company with Specific Date Range + Past Title @ Past Company during Specific Date Range

i.e., formerly worked at Amazon as an Area Manager between 2014-2016 and does not currently work for Amazon

site:linkedin.com/in “Amazon graphic” “Area Manager amazon * * jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec 2014..2016” -intitle:Amazon -inanchor:Amazon

3. Current Job Title + Current Company + Past Company with Specific Date Range + Past Title with Specific Date Range @ Past Company

i.e., a Manager at Walmart who used to be an Area Manager at Amazon between 2014-2021

site:linkedin.com/in (inanchor:Walmart | intitle:Walmart) (inanchor:manager | intitle:manager) “amazon graphic” “Area Manager Amazon * * jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec 2014..2021” -intitle:Amazon -inanchor:Amazon

Be creative and enjoy!

I want to share my experience sourcing a Mathematica Engineer (Palo Alto) on Reddit, Discord, and a professional forum. I followed advice from Wim Dammans and Erin Mathew, who are experts in this sort of sourcing.

Here is what I learned. Mathematica Engineers working outside of Wolfram’s Mathematica are rare primarily because it is expensive and not open-source software (here is another “closed” in the scenario!) Our client does not require their customers to purchase Mathematica; they do calculations on their server. Mathematica is widely used at universities; our candidates were likely to be recent grads in CS or any sciences.

LinkedIn search returned little, so I explored “closed” channels.

Knowing the unfortunate perception that “recruiters are spammers,” I started asking on the relevant Reddit forum, where could I post such a job? I also included a link to my LinkedIn profile, as Wim teaches us. Reddit hides personalities and revealing who I am was to reassure people. Also, I could check who viewed my profile. The channel moderator asked for details which I happily shared by editing the job link into my post.

Sharing a similar message on an internal Mathematica forum received a warm welcome. The long-time site admin contacted me and no less than helped enhance the job post and my profile. (I also tried to aggregate user profiles, but the details were too slim to identify potential candidates.)

Going to Discord, I felt bold and posted the job upfront, receiving a positive reaction.

Though the search initially seemed hopeless, we now have two people in the next interview stages. (Knock on wood!)

Join us this week for a fully updated 90-minute class

How to Find and Attract Tech Talent

on Wednesday, November 30th.