The National Provider Identifier (NPI) is an identification number for covered Healthcare providers – doctors, dentists, chiropractors, nurses, and other medical staff. Many sites duplicate this info (Google for any concrete NPI number to find them). The primary site to use for search is npino.com. In Healthcare sourcing, it can complement utilizing Healthcare registries.

View available lists of Physicians on npino.com, like Surgery NPI Lookup, and run our friend Instant Data Scraper. The tool will supply you with the Physicians’ names and some extra info.

Here is a Diversity searching tip. Take a close look at the output –

and you will notice different scraped image URLs for men and women. You can filter away!

Having a list of names, assemble a long OR search for first and last names using our LinkedIn Boolean Builder (optionally, add their specialty and other parameters) and search on LinkedIn. This way, you will likely discover some promising profiles that lack the “right” keywords. You won’t find them by LinkedIn search alone – but they are your prospects, based on NPINO data combined with LinkedIn’s. Finding their (even not very informative) LinkedIn profile opens up possibilities to reach out: InMail, invite, and run contact-finding extensions.

Please join me for a brand-new two-part webinar, Practical Healthcare Sourcing, on August 10-11 2022. The first part covers NPINO, various sources like license verification sites, sites to look up Nurses and Therapists, search sites for Healthcare professionals like Doximity (and more), Indeed, and a brief overview of the (paid) aggregators HeartBeat.ai and SeekOut. The second is LinkedIn and Google tips, finding and verifying contacts, and sourcing scenarios, including messaging. I promise it will be informative 🙂.

Diversity enthusiasts, please join us for Certified Diversity Sourcing Professional (CDSP) Program – September 2022!

In a previous post, Creating Real-Time Mini-People-Aggregators, I described a Healthcare-related use case of sourcing in license registries.

In the US, the majority of Healthcare professionals (except for some entry-level job holders) must be licensed to practice in the state where they do. License verification sites vary by state and profession, but you will often locate all Healthcare license types on one state-related site.

Sites that have license verification (link: License Lookups by State, or Google for them)  dialogs wildly vary in search functionally they provide. On some, pressing the ENTER key leads to a display of everyone, ready to be scraped. On others, you need to enter at least a few letters in the first and last name – here is an example – WV Board of Nursing. Others demand the license number or charge for requests (like LPC – Licensed Professional Counselor – License in WV) and are the hardest to source from. (That said, the latter link has a couple of “presents” for Sourcers.) License verification sites may also implement anti-scraping techniques, making collecting lists challenging.

If you are in luck, the relevant site will allow you to collect at least a full list of first and last names for a given license type. Looking them up one by one is an impossibly long task. But you can create an OR string of names with LinkedIn Boolean Builder and paste it into the LinkedIn people search, leading to finding multiple profiles.

Note that people may be licensed in more than one state and do not necessarily live in the state that interests you. You can usually collect locations as well and filter results to the state (or even city) before constructing the search string.

False positives will occur on LinkedIn if an included name is common. You can narrow the search down by adding filters such as the state and industry. You would be surprised how many profiles have a matching background but lack the basic information, like the license type, making them invisible in a LinkedIn search.

The other two ways to collect similar lists are the NPI database (npino.com) and certifications, where applicable.

We will dive into these topics in the first session of my brand-new two-part class

Practical Healthcare Sourcing

on Wednesday and Thursday, August 10-11, 2022. In the second session, we will go over Healthcare-related Google, LinkedIn tips, and messaging practices.

Will you join me?

Manipulating X-Ray results with operators such as inanchor:, AROUND(X), and others allows anyone to run precise Google-based searches.

You can use Google X-Ray Search to find LinkedIn profiles (for free) in remarkable ways! Search for:

– Headlines
– Work locations
– Correct latest company (when multiple “current” companies exist on a profile)
– Correct latest job title (when multiple “current” job titles exist on a profile)
– Past Companies
– Past Job Titles
– Latest attended school
– “True” years of experience at current company
– Grades at school
– Recommendations and Quantity of Recommendations
– Certifications
– Recently Unemployed
– Hiring Managers
– and more.

Some X-Ray opportunities, like searching for headlines or work locations, are not offered at any cost on LinkedIn. And any paid LinkedIn account is infinitely more expensive than X-Ray, because it costs nothing!

Please join Mike Santoro and me for a fast-paced webinar for Recruiters dedicated to X-Raying LinkedIn on August 18th,

The Complete LinkedIn X-Ray

Learn how to use templates for various values, advanced operators, search parameters, and utilize collected results. We will include some live demos.

100% of your payments for the webinar (pay-what-you-can) will go to humanitarian help for Ukraine. 🇺🇦 Please help us spread the word about the class! We promise to deliver some cool sourcing content that will benefit any intermediate-to-advanced Recruiter.

Job hunting or looking for clients? Here is how to locate LinkedIn members who have open positions, for networking.

It is common for people who are hiring to put in their headlines the word “hiring” (or “looking for”) along with the role(s) open.

Google’s operator inanchor: searches in Headlines.

So, here is, as an example, how to find Hiring Managers for Accountants:

accountant site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:hiring inanchor:accountant.

You can state your preferences of whom to find, like

• accountant site:linkedin.com/in intitle:manager inanchor:hiring inanchor:accountant
• accountant site:linkedin.com/in -recruiter inanchor:hiring inanchor:accountant

Replace accountant with any job title, and see the profiles of hiring authorities for the jobs of interest.

As a bonus, you can collect lists of profile URLs from X-Ray with Instant Data Scraper, bulk-upload to SalesQL, copy the list of email addresses, and mass-invite them to connect. When they accept, review their timeline, which may include the details of the opening, and send a follow-up message or two. Networking is an excellent way to utilize LinkedIn.

We have added a new Agent to Social List that collects and exports lists of Hiring Managers.

Check out our recently updated Sourcing Hacks, 4th Edition ebook, where you will find various other tips to make sourcing easier.

It sounds sexy to Source without LinkedIn – and it should. One can do some exciting things outside of LinkedIn. However, you need to know quite a bit about people’s professional history to consider them potential candidates. Where else, except LinkedIn (or job boards, which have been deserted lately,) can you find someone’s job title, company, how long they have worked there, a description of what they did, a degree they got, and skills, plus location? It is hard or impossible to source entirely outside of LinkedIn, even for lower-level positions where only a fraction of potential candidates are members.

One of my recent sourcing projects was looking for Social Workers and Therapists with a LICSW (“licensed independent clinical social worker”) license in West Virginia. Searching LinkedIn for “LICSW” found some but had a low volume. I Googled and found a WV License verification site that happily revealed the list of all licensed at the press of the ENTER key. I collected a list of about 300 names of professionals with the correct, active license in the requested locations. The list did not have unique identifiers like email addresses, so I went with a long “OR” search of the first and last names on LinkedIn, narrowing it to a few more parameters. As a result, I found twice as many matching profiles as before – who had the license but did not add it to their profiles. For some, the last degree stated was Bachelor’s, while LICSW people must have a Master’s; but I knew they are Master’s from the license database. Locating LinkedIn profiles allowed me to look up their contacts with SalesQL, invite them to connect, message, and email them.

Another project was sourcing for Big 4 Partner candidates in Cybersecurity. I ran an X-Ray of a competitor, site:deloitte.com/us/en/profiles partner cyber security, and got a list of potential candidates, along with emails, to filter and review. LinkedIn provided me with their length of time at Deloitte and different ways to message.

As a third example of the approach, sourcing for Software Developers, I always go from Github to LinkedIn.

The key is to combine data from LinkedIn and other sites in real-time. That is what our new webinar How to Find Hidden LinkedIn Profiles (July 19-20, 2022), is about. There are two ways the combination flows: Research and Data Lookup, which we will discuss in the class, along with practical examples. No coding is required to perform the techniques we will share.

With data lookups, you are creating mini-people-aggregators of the moment, with the advantage that the data is fresh! We will also go over various ways to use the enriched data in messaging. Will you join us?

It was not the case 10-15 years ago, but now, Google pays attention if you repeat a keyword or a key phrase. Repeating, in theory, should not be necessary; you would expect the same results if Google followed formal Boolean logic and displayed “all” results. However, Google puts some informal “thinking” into the string interpretation, so:

1. If you repeat a keyword, and the number of results is under 100-200, Google will change the order of the results. It will prioritize pages with a “stronger” presence of the keyword (whatever that means)
2. If you repeat a keyword, and the number of results is over 300-400, Google will also present you with a different set of results (!)
3. As a bonus, you also will see the repeated word in the snippets more often.

Examples are easy to come by.

• site:linkedin.com/in “recruiter” “ibm” 303 results
• ibm site:linkedin.com/in “recruiter” “ibm” 304  results>> 212 duplicates
• ibm iibm ibm ibm ibm site:linkedin.com/in “recruiter” “ibm” 168 results >> NO duplicates!

So, alter your strings by repeating keywords, and possibly, the word order, and you are off to collect thousands of profiles from X-Ray.

Do not miss the upcoming Talent Sourcing Bootcamp – July 6-8. We will cover “everything” sourcing. (Only a few spots are left at this time.)

In our training, we look into restrictive search filters on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Recruiter. Some restrictions come from members with “shallow” profiles; many (such as seniority, function, or company size) are there because LinkedIn cannot interpret some of its data correctly.

If you use LinkedIn Recruiter, you likely search by years of experience. But have you tried searching for any years of experience, from zero to 30 (max)? This search finds only 290M+ LinkedIn members (and you are missing the rest):

Equipped with the hidden search operators, you can find people with more than 30 years of experience; there are 21M+:

So how many people are missing when you search for years of experience? And how many of them are “open to work”? Ready?

570M+ LinkedIn Members Have No Years of Experience

Of These, 12M+ Are Open To Work

Indeed, these profiles do not have enough information. But when you search for years of experience, apparently, you only access about 34% of LinkedIn profiles.

If you have a hard-to-fill opening, you might want to drop the filter or even search for people with no “yoe” on purpose. Your response rate will be higher!

Join me for a repeat of the Talent Sourcing Bootcamp, July 6-8 and learn many things about LinkedIn (that “Help” does not tell us) as well as Google, Boolean, Tools, and scraping.

Guest Post from Talent Sourcer Mike Santoro

This post is Part 2 of another post that featured the helpful discovery that Google’s inanchor: operator will search LinkedIn Headline text through X-Ray search. You can read Part 1 here: Sink Into LinkedIn Headlines Tie inanchor: To Your Strings.

Part 2 – X-Raying LinkedIn with inanchor: will search more than just LinkedIn Headlines

First, I’ll share What’s New with inanchor: and show “How to Steer the Boat” using an all-inclusive example of its newfound power for Sourcers and Recruiters to benefit from.

Second, for those readers who want to understand “Why the Boat Floats,” I’ll share more technically why inanchor: works the way it does and a “Deep Dive” to see under the Google waters (if you like technical “scuba diving”). =)

What’s New?

After the Headline discovery documented in Part 1, Irina and I collaborated on researching inanchor: more deeply. Based on early testing, I suspected that inanchor: would also search for someone’s most recently attended school (or currently attending). Irina suspected that inanchor: would also search someone’s current location.

In summary, we uncovered that inanchor: will search *ALL of the following 8 areas of LinkedIn Profiles:

1. Headlines
2. Geographic City Location

All global city names, areas, and countries can be searched with inanchor, but “U.S. City + state abbreviation” combinations have the most precision!

When searching for U.S. Cities

Use both the city and state abbreviation together for the most accurate results:

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:”Philadelphia PA”

You can also query for profiles with the “Greater” verbiages like this:

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:”Greater Chicago Area”

When searching for most non-U.S. cities

Use only the city name

site:uk.linkedin.com/in inanchor:london

You can also query for profiles with the “Greater” verbiages like this:

site:uk.linkedin.com/in inanchor:”Greater Cambridge Area”

3. Most Recently Attended School Name

i.e., Universities and Colleges.

4. Most Current Company Name

If currently unemployed, then inanchor will return Most Recent Company Name

i.e., inanchor:Amazon can find people who currently work at Amazon but also find someone like this who recently left in Feb 2022 and “closed” the job on their profile:

Notably, you can’t search for “closed jobs” with X-Ray using Google’s intitle: operator (which only searches current companies that are presently open). Nor can you use LinkedIn Recruiter’s Advanced Search. Using inanchor: has an advantage here for the Recruiter/Sourcer to find additional unemployed candidates by the most recent company they left.

5. Full Name

Or by just First Name only or just Last Name only

6. Any Professional Designations

Letters people append to their names like CPA, PMP, CPIM, Ph.D., etc.

8. Recommendations Given To Others

Clarification: It is the Recommenders words given to someone else.

I.e., if you search a phrase like:

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:”John is an outstanding leader”

Google will show you profiles of people (not named John) who wrote such a phrase about a random person named John. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a helpful use case.

*Note: Because inanchor: searches ALL of these 8 fields on a LinkedIn Profile, you will have some false positive results to your search when there is crossover in these areas.

i.e., using inanchor: to search School Names could show you three different types of results:

1) Results of alumni who already graduated

2) Those who are currently enrolled, and

3) Those who currently (or most recently) work at the school

How to Steer the Boat

Let’s have some fun and create one Boolean string example to show how powerfully simple it can be to use.

Using inanchor: let’s find LinkedIn profiles with ALL of the following:

1) “Software Engineer” in the Headline

2) Currently work at Amazon

3) Most recently attended/graduated from the “University of Southern California”

4) Currently live in Seattle, WA, or “Greater Seattle Area”

5) Have worked in their most recent role at Amazon for approximately 3..6 years.

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:“Software” inanchor:“Engineer” inanchor:“Amazon” inanchor:“University of Southern California” (inanchor:“Greater Seattle Area” OR inanchor:“Seattle WA”) “present 3..6 years”

Wow! That’s Powerful! =)

Note: There will be some false positives of profiles where someone recently left Amazon and started a new job somewhere else within the past 1-2 months or so from the time of the query. These false positives are due to Google’s indexing lag on its public directories. More on this below.

Why The Boat Floats

Why does inanchor: search all of these areas?

I’ll try to make it as simple as possible:

• X-Raying LinkedIn with Google will search public LinkedIn profiles (you know this already)

• (What you didn’t know) Those public profiles have specific fields that are hyperlinks from LinkedIn’s Public Directories.

• LinkedIn’s Public Directories are lists of profiles grouped by first names, last names, full names, and other ways. 

• (Key Analogy) Just like an old-fashioned white pages phone book is a directory of names in alphabetical order that also includes other information like the person’s residential street address and phone number like this:

Similarly, LinkedIn’s public directory pages also include other information along with the names on its directory’s list.

What else does it include?

You guessed it:

• Name
• Headline
• Location
• Most Recently Attended School Name
• Most Current/Recent Company Worked For

Here is an example of what it looks like:

Because LinkedIn public directory links point to LinkedIn Profiles, the directories are considered “Anchor Pages” by Google’s Index.

Therefore, when you are searching with inanchor: combined with the x-ray site: command for profiles, you are asking Google to search the text on the “Anchor Pages” of the LinkedIn Public Profiles, thus the public directories they are linked to.

In other words, you are saying:

“Google, please search for these keywords in the LinkedIn’s Public Directory Pages and then return the public profile pages that are ‘anchored’ to those places in the directory.” 

Deep Dive (Under the Google Waters)

Keep reading if you like technical “scuba diving.” There is more treasure to be found below. =)

So how do you find these LinkedIn Public Directories?

i.e., Let’s find all of the LinkedIn public directories that Irina Shamaeva is in:

site:linkedin.com/pub/dir “Irina Shamaeva” Sourcer

You’ll see Irina is currently in at least 4 LinkedIn Public Directory Pages indexed by Google:

Note: if you want to view these public pages, you will need to log out of LinkedIn first to view them as they appear to Google.

1. https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Irina/Shamaeva (U.S. Directory by Full Name)
2. https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/+/Shamaeva (U.S. Directory by Last Name)
3. https://cn.linkedin.com/pub/dir/+/Shamaeva (China Directory by Last Name)
4. https://ch.linkedin.com/pub/dir/+/Shamaeva (Switzerland Directory by Last Name)

Question –      Why does it matter that Irina is listed in multiple LinkedIn directories?

Answer –         The Recruiter/Sourcer can uniquely find someone by their old headline and their new headline (or both old location and new location) for several weeks or months.

Each directory is re-indexed by Google at different times. Therefore, if Irina updated her LinkedIn profile headline (or location) today, the new change would be found with inanchor: when at least 1 of the 4 directories is re-indexed (updated) by google. Thus, you could also find her by her old headline (or old location) until the other 3 directories are also re-indexed by Google.

Inevitably, there will be some discrepancies when there are recent profile changes, but such discrepancies are minimal and can even be an advantage! Knowing that someone just recently changed their profile can be leveraged advantageously.

I.e., imagine messaging a candidate with something like this:

“John, I noticed you recently changed your Headline from (X) to (Y). Good move. Let’s talk.”

How many recruiters can reach out to a candidate with that kind of unique perception? =)

Lots more use cases for Recruiters and Sourcers to explore the advantage of the indexing lag of multiple directory pages.

Finally, enjoy “Sailing through LinkedIn Profiles” with these new methods and have fun experimenting with higher quality and more precise X-Ray Strings than ever before!

“For Love of Sourcing and Sourcers” –Mike Santoro

Guest Post from Talent Sourcer Mike Santoro

How to Search Linkedin Profile Headlines with X-Ray

You won’t find a “Headline Search Field” option in LinkedIn Recruiter, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, or Linkedin.com Basic Search. Isn’t that strange? ( Yes).  Irina shared a headline search tip (first discovered by Aaron Lintz) in her Facebook Group Boolean Strings, the Internet Sourcing Community – FB.  If you have a Linkedin Recruiter level account, then there is a “Hidden Unpublished Operator” headline: that still works if you insert it into the “job title search field” that will allow you to search headline text.

(BTW, you should join Irina’s Facebook Group. Many great discussions, collaboration, and peer reviews of new methods like this one were first published and peer-reviewed in her FB Group).

However, what about those who don’t have a LinkedIn Recruiter level account?  You’re in luck! This discovery will show you how to easily X-Ray search for keywords in LinkedIn Headlines using a lesser-known advanced google operator.

But first, a Question:  Why is it essential for Recruiters and Sourcers to have the ability to search for Keywords within LinkedIn Headlines exclusively?

Answer: Professionals are more and more often understanding the value in editing their LinkedIn Profile Headlines beyond just the default “JOB TITLE at CURRENT COMPANY NAME.” The Headline is their key profile “real estate” to define themselves. Whenever someone posts anything on LinkedIn, the news feed will show three things, their Full Name, their Profile Picture, and their Headline!  Professionals are now more often putting their CORE skills in their Headlines or their REAL “functional job title” (what they do) while putting their often corporate given “generic job title” under their work experience section. And, since LinkedIn makes Headlines challenging to search with precision, it’s harder for Recruiters and Sourcers like us to find them.

Therefore, I’m sharing this discovery of a new X-Ray method to help Recruiters and Sourcers who don’t have LinkedIn Recruiter and want to more precisely search Headlines for how people self-identify themselves and their skills.  It can make your job easier and make your hiring managers happier.

“For Love of Sourcing and Sourcers”  –Mike Santoro

Google Search has an obscure, lesser-known advanced operator called inanchor: that I’ve never seen any other talent sourcers or recruiters use effectively.

The discovery is simple.

When used through X-Ray Search, Google’s inanchor: advanced operator will search text within the “Headline’s” section of a LinkedIn Profile.

Yes, it’s that simple!

Try this:

site:www.linkedin.com/in site:www.linkedin.com/in inanchor:”Retail Sales Manager”

This example above will show all those who have the phrase “Retail Sales Manager” exclusively in their Headline!

Here’s one way this can be very useful. Since Irina and others have published that we can use Google’s intitle: operator to search for someone’s Current Job Title (or current company’s name), then we can now combine intitle: with inanchor: in many useful ways like this:

site:www.linkedin.com/in site:www.linkedin.com/in inanchor:”Retail Sales Manager” -intitle:”Retail Sales Manager”

This example above will show a new group of formerly “less discoverable” candidates who self-identify themselves as “Retail Sales Managers” in their LinkedIn Headlines but have a different Current Job Title like just “Sales Manager” or “Retail Manager” or “Retail Store Manager.”

You can also do the opposite.  Search for those who have “Retail Sales Manager” as their current job title but a different phrase in their Headline:

site:www.linkedin.com/in intitle:”Retail Sales Manager” -inanchor:”Retail Sales Manager”

Here are more inanchor: examples to inspire your sourcing creativity.

You are a Tech Sourcer and want to find a Python expert. Many of those candidates will have the generic corporate job title like “Software Engineer” or “Software Developer” in their experience section. But those who are true “experts” in Python will likely describe themselves and their experience in their Headlines more clearly as a “Python Developer” or “Python Engineer” or “Expert in Python,” or list the word “Python” with other software skills, etc.

Therefore, you can search LinkedIn Headlines for those phrases using Google’s inanchor: operator to find more accurate candidates like this.  Those who have “Engineer” in their current job title and “Python” in their Headline (but not “python” in their current job title):

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:python intitle:engineer -intitle:python -inanchor:engineer

You will find a formerly less discoverable candidate like Brandt Bucher, who self-identifies himself clearly in his Headline as a “Python Core Developer,” but his current job title is vague “Software Engineer II” at Microsoft:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandtbucher/

Or

You are doing an Executive Search, and you want to find a CEO who also uses the word “Visionary Leader” in their Headline. Now you can search for those candidates like this:

site:linkedin.com/in inanchor:”visionary leader” intitle:”CEO”

You will find someone like Victoria, whose job title is a “CEO” and whose Headline states the phrase “visionary leader”  :

https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-stevenson-98555a8/

Furthermore, you can get complex and more specific too! (This is where it gets fun and very exciting to use)

How about we look for “Open to Work” Sales Professionals with Digital Marketing Experience who are NOT Managers, Directors, or Executives.  We will use inanchor: to search for those who put the phrase “Open to Work” or “Open to New” in their Headlines. We will use -inanchor: and -intitle to (more cleanly than ever) remove managers, directors, and executives from the search results by profiles with those words in both the Headline and current job title sections:

site:linkedin.com/in (inanchor:”Open to work” OR inanchor:”Open to new”) inanchor:”Sales” digital marketing -inanchor:director -inanchor:executive -inanchor:manager -intitle:director -intitle:manager -intitle:executive

So many new and fun possibilities to find new candidates with more precision!

Enjoy this!