LinkedIn’s New Non-Boolean Search Functionality

I originally published this post on LinkedIn, but am reposting here to ensure my blog readers catch it. When I attended LinkedIn’s Talent Connect 2015 conference in Anaheim, CA and I was able to take some video of Eddie Vivas, Head of Talent Solutions Product for LinkedIn, formerly the Founder and Chief Product Officer at Bright.com (acquired by LinkedIn), talking about … Read More

Using Google to Search for People in Specific LinkedIn Groups

In this post, I am going to share with you the journey I took and the discoveries I made while investigating the answer to a Boolean search request for help I recently came across online about using -dir in a Google X-Ray search of LinkedIn. Some of you may enjoy and appreciate seeing my methodology, others will likely learn a thing or … Read More

How to Find Military Veterans for Sourcing & Recruiting

In a similar vein to my recent diversity sourcing article, I wanted to create a resource for people looking to effectively search for and identify military veterans for recruiting. While this posts focuses on the U.S. armed forces, I encourage folks from other countries to create and distribute similar searches to identify their own military veterans. If you’re interested in … Read More

List of U.S. Location Phrases on LinkedIn

Last week I was assisting a team in building an exhaustive sourcing strategy for identifying, contacting and pipelining a consistent and continual weekly flow of highly specialized software engineers and 13 other hiring profiles that all allow for nationwide relocation. If you’ve never been faced with such a challenge – imagine sourcing the entire U.S. (or any large country) on … Read More

How LinkedIn Search Actually Works

If you’re in sourcing, recruiting or HR, you no doubt search LinkedIn from time to time or perhaps even every day. So why not gain a better understanding of how LinkedIn search actually works? And what better way to learn how LinkedIn search works than from the Heads of Search Relevance and Query Understanding at LinkedIn? Yes, you read that … Read More

LinkedIn Sourcing Ninja Webinar Recording now on YouTube

  In case you missed my record-setting LinkedIn sourcing webinar on 6/4 (3,000+ attendees!), the fine folks at LinkedIn recorded the whole session and have graciously uploaded the presentation to YouTube, where you can find the Become a Sourcing Ninja: Earn your Boolean Black Belt with Glen Cathey video.     Be sure to change the quality to 720 for the best viewing … Read More

100+ Free Sourcing & Recruiting Tools, Guides, and Resources

  It’s been a LONG time coming, but I finally got around to updating my free sourcing & recruiting tools, guides and resources page where I now keep a current list of the best of my work all in one place for easy bookmarking and reference. You can find it here on my main page:     Additionally, I thought … Read More

LinkedIn’s Voltron Search: What’s New and What’s Missing

  In case you haven’t heard, LinkedIn is rolling out a new search interface globally over the next few weeks. If you’d like to read the official statements and press-friendly content about LinkedIn’s new search functionality, you can find read about the changes on LinkedIn’s blog, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Mashable, and PCMag.com. If you’re only going to read one – … Read More

Is LinkedIn Locking Down Public Profiles or Just Having Problems?

  Have you noticed anything different about LinkedIn recently – specifically with regard to viewing 3rd degree profiles, searching for headline phrases, searching by first and last name, and using Google and Bing to X-Ray search for public profiles? I have, and either I am encountering some serious and hopefully temporary errors, or LinkedIn may finally making serious moves to … Read More

What’s the most effective way to X-Ray search LinkedIn?

  I’ve recently come across some blog posts and some Boolean Strings discussions on LinkedIn that inspired me to go back and tinker with searching LinkedIn via Google and Bing. For example, I continue to see people talk about: Whether or not you should use “pub” and/or “in” (e.g. site:linkedin.com/in | site:linkedin.com/pub) Whether or not you should use -dir Using country … Read More

My SourceCon Presentation – LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics

  I was honored to be asked to present at the Dallas 2012 SourceCon event – which turned out to be the largest SourceCon event ever! When I was talking with Amybeth Hale back at the end of 2011 about what I’d like to present on, I asked if anyone had ever run a session solely dedicated to LinkedIn. Now, … Read More

8 Minute Video from my LinkedIn #InToronto Presentation

  I’ve had the distinct honor of speaking at every event that LinkedIn has put together in the U.S. and Canada, and I will also be speaking at the third Talent Connect event on October 10-12 in Las Vegas, where they expect well over 2,000 people to attend. I’ll be running 2 sessions on effectively searching LinkedIn (one basic and … Read More

How to View Full Profiles of Your 3rd Degree LinkedIn Network

  Just a short while ago I posted a piece on how some people are no longer able to view full profiles of their 3rd degree LinkedIn connections when logged in and searching withing LinkedIn. At the time of the article, I had not been affected, and I kept checking daily to see if and when I would be. Alas, the … Read More

How Would You Search for these Positions on LinkedIn?

One of the things that has always struck me as extremely odd with regard to sourcing is the fact that there appears to be so little sharing of Boolean search strings. While one can find basic search string examples in training materials and in various sourcing groups online, I know plenty of sourcers and recruiters that have never seen another … Read More

How to See Full Names of 3rd Degree Connections on LinkedIn

For a while, there was an interesting little method for revealing the full name of 3rd degree and group connections on LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn has changed the “get introduced” functionality and UI for most people and effectively eliminated that method (albeit unintentionally, IMO). Oh well – it was easy and fun while it lasted. Fortunately, I’ve recently become aware of … Read More

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect, Talent Pipeline, and Certification

Talent Connect 2011 in Las Vegas  was just as good as, if not better than, Talent Connect 2010 in San Francisco. Nearly 2,000 people showed up, which is around 3 times as many attendees as last year’s conference, and they represented over 700 companies from 17 countries. One thing’s for sure – LinkedIn knows how to put on a conference. The Talent … Read More

How to Search for Top Students and GPA’s on LinkedIn

Have you ever wanted or needed to search for top students of people who have achieved high grade point averages in high school or college? While GPA is relatively unimportant to many employers – to others, a high GPA is indicative of a person’s ability to achieve results in an unstructured environment (no one is there making you go to class … Read More

How I Search LinkedIn to Find and Identify Talent

Would you like to know how I search LinkedIn when sourcing for talent? I don’t have a premium LinkedIn account, so you may be surprised to learn that I don’t X-Ray search LinkedIn all that often. I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first I would like to share my inspiration for this post. I recently read a great … Read More

LinkedIn’s Undocumented Search Operator

Earlier this year, I wrote an article on how to use LinkedIn’s advanced search operators as search agents in which I briefly mentioned and demonstrated an undocumented LinkedIn search operator at the very end of the post. Did you catch it? If not, you’re in luck. Although it’s not an Earth-shattering discovery by any means, it is a discovery nonetheless, … Read More

Update Your LinkedIn X-Ray Searches for Location Names

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across something on LinkedIn that I am surprised I never noticed before – I’m not even certain if/when LinkedIn made the change. Finally sitting down to write about it, I highly doubted that I could be the only person to have discovered this interesting little find, so I did some quick research and … Read More