Mailbag: "Why does Peopletoucher only Support Searches under Current Job Titles and Current Companies?"

Today's question came in from Mark: "I ran a query using the title of "project manager." Is it possible to use peopletoucher to search both current and previous titles and companies?"

When building the Peopletoucher Search Engine, we decided to make the default behavior current company and current title only, in order to increase the accuracy of the search results, and help promote the best searching behavior.

Here's some probable solutions to your issue and searching best practices.

1. Add more connections in order to grow your network.

Falling back on "Current & Past" as a way to find more names for a common title like "project manager" is an inaccurate way to search, as you dig up contacts that may not be relevant to the current assignment. You will find people that have moved out up and out of that role, who might now be "Director of Client Services" or another Director or VP level position. Are these candidates going to be open for a project management job?

Recently, I wrote about 3 network boosting tips to add more connections and increase searching ability when using LinkedIn.

2. Break your search into small one or two word title search terms and use the RankFilter.

In the title search terms section, enter "project" and in the RankFilter section, highlight "Manager" (and maybe "Staff" and "Director") as selected ranks. This step will allow you to widen or narrow down your search based on rank, and allow you to add or remove title search terms to find the right results.

3. Use more title search terms in order to include more of the right targets who use variations on the same title.

I did a quick search for project managers to see what other titles people use. I would suggest adding, "Program", "Programme", and also found a few results for "Project Lead", which indicates to me you should include "Staff" in your RankFilter setting as "Manager" is not often in their title.