LinkedIn people search still works when the query is simple and specific. In this guide, I’m going to show you the five search workflows that still hold up: search by name, name plus company, name plus location, role plus company, and role plus location. I’ll also show you where LinkedIn search gets weak, what to do after you find the right person, and when to stop doing this manually.
“My most frequent workflow is to go to a company's account page, click on the number of employees at the top... and then I filter by the title I need. With this change, the list of company employees is relatively useless because I can't narrow it down...”
Have you figured out a replacement for the removed title filter?
by u/SumOfChemicals in linkedin
Why this still matters
Most people using LinkedIn people search are trying to find one actual person.
Usually that means one of these:
- a recruiter finding candidates
- a sales rep finding the right buyer
- a founder finding investors or operators
- a journalist verifying a person before outreach
There are still two real routes:
- Search inside LinkedIn.
- Search on Google and land on LinkedIn anyway.
This guide keeps the five workflows from our older LinkedIn people search post, because that piece got the practical part right.
Search by name
Use this when you know the exact person’s full name.
Step by step
- Type the full name into LinkedIn search.
- Click the People tab.
- If results are messy, wrap the full name in quotes.
- Scan the tighter result set.
"ryan reynolds". In the original walkthrough, this cut results from about 1,200 to 767.If the name is still too common after quotes, do not keep scrolling. Add company or location.
Search by name and company
Use this when you know the name and the employer.
Step by step
- Search the person’s name.
- Add the company name.
- Look for the employer context directly in the result.
amy hood.
amy hood microsoft. The result becomes easier to verify because LinkedIn shows the Microsoft CFO context directly.If you know the company, use it. This is the fastest way to confirm the right person.
Search by name and location
Use this when the name alone is not unique enough.
Step by step
- Search the name first.
- Add a location filter or location keyword.
- Review the narrower list.
elbakyan.
Location usually cuts the result set faster than vague title words.
Search by role and company
Use this when you want employees at one company with a specific title.
Step by step
- Put the multi-word title in quotes.
- Add the company with
AND. - Review the results for current title plus company matches.
Search:
"software engineer" AND apple
That is still the cleanest move for this workflow.
“their new AI people search is atrociously awful, returning junky, irrelevant results and missing legitimate results altogether.”
Why has LinkedIn changed their search filters for employees?
by u/BaxterAglaminkus in linkedin
That complaint is fair. Broad search gets sloppy fast. Quotes plus Boolean still help.
Search by role and location
Use this when you want to find a type of person in a geography, like founders in a city or region.
Step by step
- Start with a broad role cluster.
- Filter by location.
- Spot the junk.
- Exclude it with
NOT.
Start with:
tech AND founder
Then tighten with either:
NOT investor AND (tech AND founder)
or:
NOT investor AND tech AND founder
NOT investor.“It is a nightmare.”
That was one of the top comments in the removed-title-filter thread. Short, but accurate.
What to do after you find them
Finding the profile is not the finish line.
Usually the next question is one of these:
- did I find the right person?
- are they still at that company?
- do I need one profile or a lot of them?
- am I going to repeat this every week?
If it is one person once, manual LinkedIn is enough.
If it is a repeated workflow, manual LinkedIn people search turns into dumb labor fast.
Beware the search limit
Our older LinkedIn people search post warned about this, and the warning still stands: if you do a lot of profile clicking and repeated employee hunting, LinkedIn search gets annoying fast.
The old guide showed both the vague monthly-search warning and the hard stop screen. Here they are, because this part has not gotten friendlier.
LinkedIn’s help docs also say people-search results are personalized and “unique to each member” based on relevance and your own context. That means the same query can rank differently for different users.
That is fine for browsing. It is bad for repeatable systems.
Search at scale instead
The old article recommended Proxycurl. That recommendation is dead, because Proxycurl is dead. The shutdown note is here: Goodbye Proxycurl.
So here is the modern recommendation plainly: use NinjaPear when LinkedIn people search stops being a one-off task and starts becoming a repeated process.
NinjaPear is not LinkedIn search. Good. It gives you people search and employee search via API from public web sources, and its docs are explicit that it does not scrape social media platforms. That matters. If you want the legal angle spelled out, read Steven’s piece on whether scraping LinkedIn is legal in 2026. Building an important workflow on legal gray crap is a bad idea.
Here is the practical decision table.
| Use case | Manual LinkedIn | Person Profile Endpoint | Employee Search Endpoint | Best choice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Find one person one-off | Fast and good enough | Overkill unless you need structure | Wrong tool | Manual LinkedIn |
| Verify a person by company | Decent | Best fit | Weak fit | Person Profile |
| Find many employees by title | Slow and noisy | Weak fit | Best fit | Employee Search |
| Repeat the same search weekly | Fragile | Good for one-person refreshes | Best fit | Employee Search |
Use Person Profile for one person
Use the Person Profile Endpoint when you already know roughly who the person is and want a structured answer.
Good inputs:
- work email
- name + company
- role + company
Short example:
curl -G "https://nubela.co/api/v1/employee/profile" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
--data-urlencode "name=Patrick Collison" \
--data-urlencode "employer_website=stripe.com"
What this does: it resolves one person from name + company and returns a structured profile instead of a messy search page.
Use Employee Search for many people
Use the Employee Search Endpoint when you want many current employees at a company and need a repeatable workflow.
This is the upgrade path for:
- recruiting into one account
- sales prospecting into a target company
- market mapping a team
- repeating the same role search every week
Short example:
curl -G "https://nubela.co/api/v1/employee/search" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
--data-urlencode "company=apple.com" \
--data-urlencode "role=software engineer" \
--data-urlencode "page_size=10"
What this does: it searches for employees at one company by role and gives you structured results you can reuse.
That is the key difference. Manual LinkedIn search gives you a browsing experience. NinjaPear gives you a repeatable system.
My final recommendation
Use manual LinkedIn people search when you need one person and you need them now.
Use Person Profile Endpoint when you want a structured profile for one person.
Use Employee Search Endpoint when you need many people at one company.
And if you are repeating the same LinkedIn people search every week, stop doing that to yourself. Move the workflow into NinjaPear and get on with your week.