There are thousands upon thousands of LinkedIn profiles that you can connect to, but which ones are relevant to you and what you are trying to achieve? The intent of the NBS is not to randomly approach anyone and everyone, but to help you find strategic partnerships by filtering out people who aren’t relevant, and filter in those who are.
We have discovered if you are deliberate with how you use the search feature on Linkedin, you will have substantially better results in terms of the people who meet and partner with you in building a network. Essentially, the Boolean uses keywords contained in a person’s profile to refine the multitudes into a list of profiles for people you are looking for. Having a well-thought-out Boolean string has a MASSIVE effect on your results – don’t underestimate it!
There are several things to consider when you are putting together your Boolean search string, and it’s important that it, like your messages and profile summary, will, over time, be adapted and changed to match what you are looking for and your greater goals. So, it is important to be clear about your intentions:
You are searching for people who you can build a genuine relationship with and that you can advocate for into your other existing relationships.
If you keep this front of mind, you will be able to create strings of search terms that draw out the best profiles for you to connect to, making your life far easier and your results far greater over time.
What is a Boolean Search?
A Boolean search is a type of search allowing users to combine keywords, e.g. hotel, New York, with operators (or modifiers) such as AND, NOT and OR (these need to be in all capitals) to further produce more relevant results. For example, a Boolean search could be “hotel AND New York”. This would limit the search results to only those profiles containing the two keywords, “hotel” and “New York”. This works in a similar manner as a mathematical formula in that it will read from left to right and consider in combination words contained within brackets as a single instruction. e.g. 2x (3+2)=10 is calculated as 3+2 before multiplying by 2 or hotel AND (Brisbane OR Sydney) which would produce search results that always contained the word “hotel” but could (and must) contain either the word “Brisbane” or “Sydney”.
Linkedin has a number of limitations on standard users to perform searches, e.g. a maximum number of searches per month (approximately 5-10) and the number of operators (or modifiers) you can include. Rather than using AND, a space is sufficient. e.g. “blue AND white” will produce the same results as”blue white”.
Here are some tips on creating a better boolean search string:
- Choose a small number of keywords (approximately 3-5) that must be contained in each profile for it to appear in your search results e.g. “Tall AND Dark AND Handsome” (for the actual search entry, a space between words is regarded as an “AND”).
- Choose a small number of additional keywords (approximately 3-5) that must be contained in each profile, but it could be one or the other, e.g. “Accountant OR Lawyer”.
- Add any number of keywords words that, if contained in a profile, the profile will be excluded from your search results e.g. “NOT(academic) NOT(student) NOT(Coast) NOT(Coach)”.
Your search string would then be: (Tall Dark Handsome) (Lawyer OR Accountant) NOT(academic) NOT(student) NOT(Coast) NOT(Coach)
And, it will produce a list of all the Tall, Dark and Handsome accountants or lawyers that are not academics, student or coaches, and are not located at the Sunshine Coast or Gold Coast (or any coast).
Following are some other example which apply the principles:
(I OR My) (business owner) (ambitious) OR(collaborative) NOT(manufacturing) NOT(coach) which will search for profiles written in the first person, by people who are business owners that are ambitious or collaborative, but not in manufacturing or coaching.
There should be no space after OR and NOT and the brackets are required to group sets of keywords.
This does not work:
Entrepreneur OR “Thought leader” OR Strategist OR visionary OR founder OR leader OR CEO OR CFO OR COO OR collaborative OR collaborator
This does work:
Entrepreneur OR(Thought leader) OR(Strategist) OR(visionary) OR(founder) OR(leader) OR(CEO) OR(CFO) OR(COO) OR(collaborative) OR(collaborator)
You would enter this in the Search box of LinkedIn as shown in the following screenshot:
Important:
The operators (e.g. OR, NOT) must be entered in ALL CAPS. For example, ‘or’ won’t work, but OR will.
When you do a search on LinkedIn, it will tell you the number of profiles it found which match your search criteria.
Let’s say, for example, you simply type ‘Mary’ into the search box with no other filters. LinkedIn would return in excess of 1 million entries from its worldwide database.
However, LinkedIn will only let you view the first 1000 of the profiles its search has found.
So anything beyond 1000 results can’t be accessed and is wasted (no harm, just not productive).
Here’s a good diagram which visually explains how the Booleans work
LinkedIn “Commercial Limits”
If you exceed an unknown number of Searches per month (we think it’s around 15 per month), LinkedIn will display a message warning you that you are about to reach your “Commercial Limit”.
After you reach your Commercial Limit, LinkedIn will restrict your searches and suggest you upgrade to a paid version.
The restriction will stay in place until they give you another 15 (or whatever the number is) to play with.
This restriction does not usually worry us too much as we can collect up to 1000 profiles from one LinkedIn search.
Why and how do we use Boolean Searches?
Rather than focusing on particular industries, look for people who are driven to get ahead, have a good attitude and believe in building trusted relationships rather than expecting immediate transactions.
The best way to find good potential candidates on LinkedIn is to look at their profiles to see if they contain keywords like “ambitious” or “passionate” or “innovative”.
Depending on your aptitude for Boolean Logic, get some time with your coach or someone who can explain how LinkedIn Boolean searches work – you’ll gradually get the hang of it.