Sourcing via Google Searching of LinkedIn's Top 25 Lists.

X-ray Searching LinkedIn's "Top 25" Lists.

When I began researching methods combining text browsers, powerful auto-editing tools and Google Advanced (X-ray) searching, I asked my friend +Angus Grady, a practitioner of the art of Sourcing, for a real world example to work with.

At the time, Angus was searching for people with specific job titles and experience. In looking at ways to tackle such problems efficiently with my methods, I stumbled on something interesting, which I have just been reminded of via a discussion with +Irina Shamaeva in the Boolean Strings LinkedIn Group, where it came up in another context.

Did you know that LinkedIn lists "Top 25" profiles of  people under virtually any criteria you can think of?

Now, if you are a LinkedIn User, you have to do the search in a Private Browsing window (or "incognito mode" with Chrome) otherwise you will see something different (and it might also effect your LinkedIn Advanced "commercial limit" +Irina Shamaeva?). Private searching can be important factor for internet sourcing and recruiting anyway, which makes this method even more important.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Angus was searching for "Research Chemists". Here's what I found. Try entering this into Google search, in a private browsing window:

site:linkedin.com/title "Research Chemist"
 
I think that even the first page of results will speak for itself. Here's a snapshot of what I got at the time of writing this:

There are many advantages and benefits to getting information on not just one prospect, but 25 at a time, especially with semi-automated scripting, which I won't go into here, but clearly, the applications for Competitor Analysis are also large.

Of course, the real world application of this comes into play when using more complex search logic than just a  job title, but I hope this demonstrates there is real power in X-Ray searching of LinkedIn.