LinkedIn expert tip – find people without paying $25

Summary:

Sometimes, you search for someone in LinkedIn, but it says “out of network” because they aren’t a 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd level connection, and LinkedIn won’t give you the person’s name.   You assume you have to pay LinkedIn $25 in order to see their name.  Not true, because you know me.

Details:

Here’s my real life example

I was talking to a potential client (for social media consulting) at Connecticut Plastics, and she mentioned to me that the owner would be calling me.  I didn’t hear his name clearly, and it would be awkward if I didn’t know him by name when he called.

I did an advanced search on LinkedIn for

Connecticut Plastics owner

and it showed that he had a LinkedIn profile, but he was “out of network”, so LinkedIn wouldn’t give his name.

Cough up 25 bucks?  Not yet.

Look in Google using a fancy trick

Realize that Google has most LinkedIn profiles, so the trick is to somehow find them on Google for free.  If you pick some unique string from the info that LinkedIn does show you, and use a special feature of Google called the “site:” feature, (which allows you to just search one site on the Internet), you may find the name and full profile through Google.

I saw the string

Engineer at Alinabal

in his profile and figured that very few other people would have that string in their profile.  Therefore, I put it into Google, along with the word owner, using the following magic search string

Engineer at Alinabal owner site:www.linkedin.com

and found the profile in the Google results.  I clicked on the link, and LinkedIn showed me the LinkedIn profile page, with name and all.

See a 2 minute sample video

If you want to see a 2 minute video that shows exactly how to do it, go to my web site at

http://www.patrickomalley.com/linkedin-find-out-of-network-profiles-free.html

This technique doesn’t work in every case, but it works in a lot of cases.  If it works for you, please send me $25 each time.

Pretty cool, huh?   Pass it on…

Shameless self-promotion

My email subscribers got this months ago – If you want these before I make them public, sign up for my email newsletter at http://www.patrickomalley.com

Speeches and seminars – I’ve been giving this tip in speeches and seminars for years.  Hire me and get WAY ahead of the curve.  And your friends will think you’re cool.