LinkedIn Advanced Search Releases New Refinement Features

Recently, LinkedIn rolled out new features as part of its Advanced People Search. This TechCrunch article explains the change was brought on to get people to stick around the site longer, and pointed out one in three users of the site perform regular searches.

On every search results page, you can now dynamically filter the results with additional criteria. Changes you make by checking off the boxes do not require you to re-run the search -- they appear instantly.

However, only some of the functionality is of any use to sales and recruiting professionals.

Relationship

This section would have been much more helpful if there was a checkbox for "out of network". If this existed, you could check "1st", "2nd", "3rd", and "Groups" and leave "out of network" unchecked. This would remove private profiles from your search results as their name is hidden from view due to being out of your network.

As it is now, in order to include 3rd level connections, you must include people outside of your network.

Location

Location checkboxes are helpful if you're only interested in contacts in a particular city, however it may be easier to simply start with the location in mind from the beginning.

Industry

Here's why you should never trust the LinkedIn Industry Field.

Although these features have some obvious shortcomings from the perspective of a sales or recruiting pro, any enhancements to searching are enouraged and create multiple angles and methods to find the contacts you're looking for!

Do you have any feedback on these new LinkedIn features? Please leave them in the comments below.