Five Tricks for LinkedIn Search

More and more entertainment professionals are integrating LinkedIn into their job searches and career development, and for good reason! Whether you’re trying to grow your network, learn about potential roles at companies of interest, identify a new business lead, hire an employee or consultant, or find a referral for a job opening, going down the rabbit hole of LinkedIn search can be really useful, if you know how to use it. Here are a few tricks we’ve uncovered that can help you in your career journey:

1. Identify targets at a specific company. Type the name of a company you’re interested in into the search bar and head to its page. There, you can see a list of all the people who work there, organized by how closely you are connected to them. A 1st degree connection would be someone you know (who you may have lost track of!). Second degree connections are usually more interesting. If you click the 2nd degree contact’s profile, you you can see who your mutual contact is. We recommend reaching out via email (not on LinkedIn!) and asking for an introduction, clearly indicating why you want to make the connection. This is one of the easiest ways to generate a warm intro to make inroads at the companies you want to work for or do business with. If you don’t have any first or second degree connections, and the company is big enough, you can put some filters on the search – LinkedIn will show you employees who went to your alma mater, for example, who are more likely to respond to cold outreach from you.

2. Search by job function. If you want to learn about a specific role or find someone with expertise in a specific area, you can type that into the search results to see what comes up (e.g. marketing partnerships, unscripted development, distribution). Many people have started to put keywords about their areas of expertise into their headlines instead of just listing their title and company (hint: You should do this too if you haven’t already!). A job title search can work too, as long as it’s something common. If you’re looking to make a career transition but aren’t sure what titles to search for, searching by job function can be a good starting point to understand which titles are used by people of interest in your field. Similar to the above, you can work your connections to get warm intros to people who have a particular job function, but this is also a useful information gathering tool to learn about different roles, set up keyword searches (more below!), see how other people’s career paths have unfolded, or give you something specific to ask about when you reach out cold.

3. Search your contacts’ contacts. LinkedIn is basically the six degrees of separation tool, only you’re Kevin Bacon. If your network feels tapped out, or you are trying find contacts outside your direct field, you may need to expand your network. Use your existing contacts as a starting point — maybe it’s your inner circle who would do anything for you, or maybe it’s the one person you know from college who works in the industry you’re trying to transition to. In their profile, click on their “500+ connections,” and as long as they don’t have their privacy filters set to prevent you from seeing their contacts, you will be able to see who they know. You can filter their connections by company, location, and more. Reach out (again, via email or text, depending on your relationship, and not on LinkedIn) and ask if they can make an intro (remembering to be clear about why you want to be connected!).

4. Search keywords and use filters. You can get really creative looking for information on the LinkedIn newsfeed when you search “posts,” and you may get some interesting results if you use filters. For example, you could type in the name of an event, and you’ll see posts from people who mention that event. Filter them to see your connections who have mentioned that event. Or type in something like “hiring” and see who has posted that they are hiring. Similarly, you could search “started new position” and see who has successfully landed somewhere new and might be growing their team or leaving an open role behind. You can also find thought leaders who post on topics you care about, which can be especially useful if you’re making a career transition. For example, if you want to move from producing unscripted TV to producing corporate content and you’d ideally like to work at a company that overlaps with your areas of interest in women’s healthcare or mindfulness, you can type in related keywords and see what comes up. These kinds of searches can turn up a lot of random results, so you will want to use any of the available filters to find helpful results. 

5. Enhance your job search with keywords. Did you know you can have up to 20 saved keyword job searches going simultaneously on LinkedIn? That means you could type in every single one of your target companies plus several other keywords or job titles and get these results fed to you on a daily basis. Ensure you never miss a posting on LinkedIn with this simple trick. At first, you may get some irrelevant job postings, but do your best to ignore the noise and only click through the ones of interest — or share the ones that are of interest with someone else in your network!

LinkedIn’s algorithm works really quickly and is pretty well-trained. As you search, you’ll get fed more job posts, people, and content that aligns with what you’ve been looking for. Sure, this means sometimes you’ll end up in a weird part of your rabbit hole, or that lingering too long on a depressing post will feed you more of the same and warp your perception of the job market, but it ALSO means you can circle back to topics of interest quickly. For example, you’re more likely to see someone’s posts in your newsfeed if you check out their profile or get fed posts about whatever keyword search you tried. This will create an ecosystem where your newsfeed and saved job searches are more tailored to your interests and do the work for you, leaving you to engage, reach out, and grow your career.