How do I search for a brand on LinkedIn?

If there's one thing we can all agree on after using LinkedIn for several years now, it's that this social network has become the de facto online resume of today's workforce. Whether you're looking to hire or keep track of your friends' jobs, LinkedIn makes finding candidates who fit into your criteria easy -- so long as you know what to look for in advance.

In addition to making job hunting simpler than ever before (and helping you avoid those dreaded "I'm sorry, but..." emails), LinkedIn also gives you access to more data about potential hires than any other site out there. And while some may be tempted to stop at just browsing through posts from their connections, LinkedIn actually offers tools specifically designed to help you get even closer with each individual person you come across. This article will give you an overview of everything you need to know when searching for a candidate on the platform.

How do I follow other companies on LinkedIn?

By default, every new user gets 50 free followers (but if you want more, they cost $99/year). If you don't have enough connections yet, try following some of your favorite brands first. You'll see which ones are worth keeping tabs on and which aren't. Once you've found a few good prospects, check them regularly to make sure they haven't unfollowed you. It's not uncommon for businesses to change their minds about whom they'd like to work with, so always check back periodically.

There are two ways to go about getting started. The easiest option is to navigate to your profile page, click the Follow button under Your Connections, and choose Companies & Organizations from the dropdown menu. A list of your connected contacts should appear below, allowing you to select whichever organization you'd like to follow. Alternatively, you can head over to Company Search and type in whatever company or industry you're interested in. When you hit Enter, you'll see a whole bunch of results pop up. Clicking Show More will allow you to narrow down your options further. After selecting the right company, simply close the box and hit Next Step. From here, you'll receive periodic updates from the selected organization via email.

How do I filter companies on LinkedIn?

You might think that LinkedIn would offer users a simple way to browse only within certain industries or locations. However, the truth is that LinkedIn doesn't really care where you live. As such, you won't be able to search for specific employers unless you specify location parameters somewhere along the line. For example, you could start off by typing "software" in the Job Title field, then switch over to Location and enter "San Francisco." Or you could use Advanced Filters instead.

Advanced Filters let you set different types of criteria based on things like skills, education level, employment history, and experience. To add these filters, click Advanced Findings, followed by Filter By... and choosing Industry or Location. Then simply fill in whatever fields you wish to limit yourself to, and hit Save Changes. Now whenever you perform another search, the results will display only profiles that match your selection criteria.

How do you search on LinkedIn?

Once upon a time, LinkedIn was known mostly for its professional networking features. But since then, the website has evolved considerably, including a host of additional functions intended to boost productivity and efficiency among both professionals and recruiters alike. Here's a quick rundown of some of the major areas you'll encounter when performing various kinds of searches:

Company Searches: These sorts of queries give you access to the full range of information available on LinkedIn. You can either type in keywords directly, or input a contact's full name (or partial) to pull up relevant content. Note that you cannot search by title, position, or department anymore.

People Searches: Similar to Company Searches, People Searches enable you to explore your entire network without having to worry about filtering by anything except your connection's last name.

Skills Searches: With Skills Searches, you can learn more about a particular skill or subject area related to your interests. You can also view recommendations made by others regarding a given topic.

Education Searches: Use Education Searches to uncover details about past educational experiences, degrees earned, and certifications obtained.

Interests Searches: Interest Searches provide insight into a person's personal passions, hobbies, and career goals.

Position Searches: Position Searches show you open positions currently being advertised by your connections and members of your network.

Job Titles Searches: Finally, you can take advantage of Job Titles Searches to locate listings posted by individuals whose titles include words or phrases that you specify.

You can also combine multiple filters together to create complex searches tailored exactly to your needs. Just remember to save your changes once you begin entering values, as doing otherwise will reset the filters back to the original settings.

What is the best way to search on LinkedIn?

As mentioned above, LinkedIn allows you to perform almost any kind of search imaginable. That said, however, it pays to utilize a handful of common strategies when dealing with the site. Below you'll find three tips that will ensure you find exactly what you're looking for, no matter what you're trying to accomplish:

Use Advanced Filtering: While basic searches return results based solely on keyword matches, Advanced Filtering enables you to tailor your search further. In fact, you can often do a lot better than just matching a single word or phrase!

Search for names rather than titles: Some people refer to themselves by their occupation or role, but many prefer to describe themselves as "a software engineer," "an attorney," "the COO," etc. Instead of relying on exact matches, therefore, why not take advantage of advanced text recognition technology to retrieve profiles containing terms similar to those used in your query?

Ask questions: Whenever possible, ask questions during your research process. Doing so helps you gather more information, gain insights, and identify trends that could prove useful later on. Additionally, asking questions will encourage your connections to share their expertise and insights with you.

The next step is learning how to properly use LinkedIn, whether you're looking to hire or keep track of your current colleagues.

If your job involves searching or filtering data on other social networks, then you probably know about LinkedIn (or at least have heard of it). It's one of those few platforms where users can get access to an unprecedented amount of information about their contacts -- even if they don't use the platform themselves. The sheer volume of data available makes this network invaluable as a professional tool, whether you're looking for new opportunities, researching background details, or just getting to know potential colleagues better.

But despite its impressive features, there are some things that still need work. Searching LinkedIn isn't always straightforward. And while you may be able to quickly build up a large list of connections, what happens when you want to narrow down the results further? Or filter them by location or industry?

We've put together a guide that explains everything from basic ways to search LinkedIn to more complex queries using Advanced Search Filters. We'll also show you examples of how to find specific types of profiles on LinkedIn so you can see exactly what kind of profile pictures people use, and which ones you should avoid in your own searches. So read on to learn all about these essential tips!

How do I filter a company on LinkedIn?

You might think that finding companies would be easy enough given that you already have their names and locations. But not everyone uses the same naming conventions for businesses. Some will call theirs "XYZ Business", others might spell out the full legal name as "XYZ Inc". Others might leave out any reference to the business altogether, referring only to themselves as XYZ instead. To make matters worse, many companies have multiple subsidiaries across different countries.

So let's say you wanted to find out who works at XYZ Inc., but you didn't know the exact spelling of the name. You could try typing in something like "xyz inc" or "xyz inc." into the search bar, hoping that it picks up both variations of the name. Unfortunately, that won't work. Instead, you'd need to type "Xyz Inc." in order to pick up results from each variation separately.

It gets slightly trickier with international companies too. If you were trying to find companies based in Australia, you'd have no luck simply entering "Australia" into the search box. Although you could start off by adding "-au" to the end of the word, this wouldn't match anything unless you had specified the country before hand. The best way around this issue is to add "@au" to the beginning of the term -- e.g. "@au xyz inc." This allows you to specify the country after it has been matched.

The above methods rely heavily on common English words being recognized correctly. For example, searching for "facebook" doesn't bring up anyone connected to Facebook (though it does return several pages of unrelated results). In contrast, searching for "fbook" brings back plenty of relevant results. As such, you shouldn't assume that every single combination of letters and numbers will yield the correct result.

Another option worth considering is to look for similar terms that aren't quite right. A bit of trial and error here usually yields good results. For instance, searching for "xyz" returns far fewer results than searching for "xyz inc.", because it doesn't give the algorithm much context as to what the user is actually seeking. However, once you've narrowed this down to a handful of possibilities, you can refine your query accordingly.

A big advantage of doing this via LinkedIn rather than Google or another search engine is that you can directly connect to the person whose page you're interested in viewing. Simply click through to the contact card of whoever you're looking for, and then select the View Profile button. This ensures that whatever you're seeing is 100% genuine, and gives you the ability to send messages straight away without having to wait until you receive permission first.

How do you search for a company on LinkedIn?

Basic LinkedIn searches are pretty simple. All you really need to do is enter either a keyword or phrase relating to what you're looking for, and hit Enter.

For instance, if you wanted to search for all members of the board of directors, you could type "board" into the search field. Then press Enter to run the search. Alternatively, you could create a custom search by clicking on the More Options link next to the textbox, selecting Customize Search, and filling in the appropriate fields under Company Name, Location, Industry, etc.

As you're likely aware, LinkedIn offers two main modes of searching: Basic and Advanced. While the former is ideal for quick searches, the latter provides deeper levels of customization. Let's take a closer look at the various options available within the Advanced section.

Can you filter by company size on LinkedIn?

While LinkedIn provides a wealth of useful information, including the number of employees working for a particular organization, unfortunately you cannot currently use the service to filter by company size.

This feature was requested long ago by users, but hasn't yet made it onto the radar of LinkedIn developers. With a little elbow grease however, we think it could be added fairly easily. There are three areas that require attention though - the Advanced Search Filter, People Search Results, and Contact Card Profiles.

Advanced Search Filters

In addition to allowing you to filter by keywords and phrases, LinkedIn now supports Boolean operators. These allow you to combine different criteria in order to produce more targeted results. Here's how it works.

Let's say you want to find out how tall the average employee at ABC Corp weighs. You could start off with a simple search for "height":

Unfortunately, this won't bring back any results. Luckily, you can fix this by combining height with weight using AND logic:

Now, you should expect to see a lot of results returned, since this is effectively saying "find me someone who is 5'10" AND overweight". When combined with other criteria, this technique can prove extremely helpful.

People Search Results

LinkedIn's People Search function lets you filter by age, gender, education level, and more. By default, it shows you the total number of people found within your selected area, along with a breakdown showing the percentage of men/women/children/professionals/entrepreneurs/etc.

However, you can tweak this display to suit your needs. Click on the dropdown menu below the search box, and choose From Contacts Only. Now you'll see a list of names filtered according to your chosen criteria.

Contact Card Profiles

Finally, you can also filter by profession. Just select the Profession column heading from the left side of the screen, followed by the desired category (e.g. Doctor) from the dropdown menu.

Once again, you can change the view by choosing From Contacts Only from the top menu, or alternatively select Contacts + Companies.

What are the most important factors when choosing the right profile picture?

When you go hunting for a suitable image to upload as your LinkedIn profile photo, there are certain considerations you must keep in mind. Most importantly, you should ensure that you're choosing a high quality image. Images uploaded to LinkedIn tend to be very small compared to images used elsewhere online, so you can expect to lose detail when scaling them down.

Beyond that, there are a couple of key points to bear in mind when picking a profile picture. Firstly, never post photos taken outside of home. Even if the subject looks happy and smiling, chances are he or she is secretly crying inside. Secondly, you should avoid posting selfies or family snapshots. Not only is this disrespectful towards the individual concerned, but it's unnecessary. Your friends and acquaintances will be able to tell the difference between a professionally posed photograph and one taken during casual conversation.

Lastly, you should consider uploading a separate headshot alongside your regular profile pic. Headshots contain additional information related to your career path, skillset, interests, hobbies, and general personality traits. They also help people decide whether to follow you in the future, especially since your LinkedIn profile automatically appears on your personal homepage.

To see which profile pictures are popular among your peers, check out our article explaining why you should switch to a square avatar.

The world’s largest professional network has become an indispensable tool in today's workforce. With over 400 million members worldwide (and growing), it can be difficult to navigate this complex platform without help. Luckily, your job doesn't have to end when the work day does—you just need some knowledge of its tools!

If you're looking for ways to improve yourself or your career while working remotely, LinkedIn ProFinder is one of our favorite resources. It provides detailed profiles with links to employers who are willing to hire candidates based on their skillset. We also like using LinkedIn Advanced Search because it allows us to customize what we want from our results. For example, if you know someone at a specific company, you could type his last name into the Company field and then click "People" under Results Filters & Options. This will bring up all of the individuals associated with that organization, which gives you more control than searching through the entire database.

But there are so many other features within LinkedIn that you may not even realize exist. The following article covers everything from finding new jobs to connecting with potential clients and colleagues. If you still don't understand why these features matter, keep reading below.

Can you hide certain companies on LinkedIn?

While you can limit your visibility on LinkedIn as much as you'd like, you cannot completely remove it from public view. Your profile still exists online regardless, but any posts made about it won't show up in Google searches unless they contain keywords related to your employer. You'll see an error message instead of seeing your profile.

This is important because hiding your employment history isn't always necessary. Some people might prefer being open about where they've worked before, whether it's for personal reasons or simply to share relevant experience with prospective employers. But others might choose to stay private due to privacy concerns or fear of discrimination lawsuits.

For those reasons, you should only consider hiding your current or previous employer(s) if you feel strongly enough to make such drastic changes. Also note that removing information from your profile doesn't necessarily mean that nobody else knows about it either. People often use secondary accounts to connect with old coworkers and former supervisors, so you might still encounter them via email or social media.

Another thing worth mentioning here is that companies aren't required to list their names on LinkedIn. They can opt out entirely or provide a generic description if they wish. While this means you might have trouble getting hired by an anonymous firm, it also prevents anyone else from knowing exactly who works for whom.

How do I find similar companies on LinkedIn?

Similar Companies lets you look for companies across different industries. When you enter a keyword in the search box, the app displays a dropdown menu containing several categories. These include Retail Services, Technology, Business Services, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Education, Financial services, etc.

You can also look for organizations whose names begin with certain letters. So, typing "B" would display businesses that start with B. A lot of these options require additional steps once you select them though. For instance, clicking Health Care opens up a whole page full of healthcare professionals, whereas selecting Retail Services takes you straight to retailers.

Once you land on a page listing multiple companies, you'll notice each entry includes a link to their website along with contact information. Clicking on that link brings you directly to the company's site where you can learn more about them. There's no way to sort by industry yet, unfortunately.

How do I find similar companies?

There's another method you can try if you're having difficulty narrowing down your search criteria. Instead of entering words individually, you can create a string consisting of multiple terms separated by commas. That way, you can type something like “retail, technology, manufacturing, health care, education, financial services” and get a better idea of what types of companies you’re interested in.

When you run a regular search, LinkedIn will return three groups of results based on relevance. The first group contains the top 30 matches, followed by the next 100, and finally anything left over. Those two extra sets of results are called Related Searches & Suggested Matches. To access them, click More after scrolling past the first few results.

To narrow things further, expand the category section on the right side of the screen. You can pick from four main choices including Industry, Location, Profession/Occupation, and Employer Size. Each option has subcategories too. Selecting a particular combination of fields will let you browse through thousands of companies.

Just remember that both methods mentioned above rely heavily on keywords. If you want to avoid accidentally filtering out similar companies, you should stick to general phrases rather than exact ones.

How do you find similar interests on LinkedIn?

Finding people with common hobbies, passions, or goals is easier said than done. However, LinkedIn offers several helpful tools for doing so. One of the best places to start is Interests. Once you tap on the icon, you'll see a long list of topics to scroll through. You can add as many tags as you want in order to organize your findings later.

Clicking on an interest reveals a summary explaining why you chose it along with suggested connections. If you think the person listed looks interesting, you can follow him or her to receive updates whenever he or she makes new posts.

It's possible to search specifically for people with shared interests by adding the word Similar to your query. This feature uses a machine learning algorithm to identify similar users according to your selections. You'll find similar people grouped together under the Find Similar tab on the left sidebar.

Another handy place to explore while looking for fellow enthusiasts is Groups. After tapping the button, you'll see a list of various categories to scroll through. As you go deeper into each topic, you'll see smaller lists beneath. Tapping on any member of a given group will reveal a brief bio and recent activity feed.

How do you find similar interests?

If none of the methods provided earlier helped you figure out what kind of people you want to meet, you should take advantage of LinkedIn's People Finder. This free service enables you to search for people based on location, profession, gender, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, ethnicity, religion, political views, relationship status, occupation, educational background, marital status, parental status, and even pet ownership.

By combining these details with basic search parameters, you can easily discover people who share your same likes and dislikes. Just remember that this process relies on users' self-reporting, so not every detail is guaranteed to match up perfectly.

A final suggestion comes from a post written by a user named Mark P. Here's what he wrote:

"I recently got back into my local gym and saw a guy wearing a shirt advertising his own company, which was called 'Gym'. He had put his phone number and e-mail address on the front, so I sent him an e-mail asking if he needed help setting up his account. Within minutes I found myself speaking with the owner of Gym."

In short, if you're trying to build relationships with people in the fitness community, LinkedIn can offer plenty of opportunities. And if you ever decide to reach out to someone personally, you never know when it will lead somewhere great.