LinkedIn People Search

Find decision-makers using LinkedIn's search. Systematically target specific roles, locations, and industries to build highly filtered prospect lists. (To target by company, use LinkedIn Company Search instead.)

When to Use This vs. Other LinkedIn Searches

LinkedIn has three search methods and they answer different questions:

• People Search (this page) — Use when you know the role you want to reach ("VP of Sales", "Head of Demand Gen") and want a steady stream of people matching that role across companies in your target industries and locations. Best for systematic, high-volume role-based prospecting.

• Company Search — Use when you know the type of company you want to reach ("B2B SaaS sales tooling", "lead gen agencies") but don't know who specifically. Returns one decision-maker per matching company. Lower volume, more focused.

• Content Search — Use when you want high-intent leads who are actively discussing problems your offer solves. Highest signal strength, lower volume than role-based search.

A common pattern: start with Content Search to get a few warm replies fast, then layer People Search on top for steady volume once you've validated the offer is landing.

How It Works

LinkedIn People Search lets you directly query LinkedIn's search with precise targeting criteria. Rather than inferring prospects from content, you explicitly define who you're looking for.

There are three ways to start a search:

1. By role + filters: Provide a job title/role keyword along with location, industry, and other filters. This is the most common approach for systematic prospecting.

2. By seed account: Provide a LinkedIn profile URL to find people similar to or following that person.

3. By lookalike seed: Select a seed from a lookalike account discovery to extract followers of that influencer.

Available Filters

Filter	Description
Title/Role	Job title keyword (e.g., "CTO", "VP Sales"). Not used in follower-of searches.
Location	Resolved from your offer's preferred locations. Supports countries, regions, cities, and abstract concepts like "Worldwide."
Industry	Resolved from your offer or overridden directly.
Follower Of	Find followers of a specific LinkedIn profile. Used by lookalike-seeded searches.

Note: Company size and network distance are not search filters - they are part of your offer's ICP definition and checked during scoring, not at search time.

Search Parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
LinkedIn Account	(required)	LinkedIn account to search from
Role	-	Job title keyword (required for direct role searches)
Offer	-	Resolves location + industry filters from the offer
Industries	from offer	Override offer's industry IDs
Max Results	250	Max results to collect (slider: 50–5,000)
Enrichment Options	-	Whether to run enrichment and deep analysis on discovered leads
Buyer Expansion	disabled	Enable daily autopilot with role rotation

Progressive Background Search

Searches run in the background- results are saved progressively as they arrive, rather than waiting for the entire search to complete. The UI shows progress as results come in.

If a search is interrupted, it automatically resumes from where it left off. Non-retryable errors (expired session, automation detected) stop the search.

Buyer Expansion (Daily Autopilot)

When buyer expansion is enabled, AutoReach automatically re-runs the search daily with role rotation to continuously discover new leads.

How it works:

1. Each day, the system rotates to the next role in the expansion queue

2. Runs a new search for that role

3. If a role returns no results, it rotates to the next

4. When all roles are exhausted, buyer expansion is automatically disabled

You can select a role from AI-generated suggestions based on your offer, or provide custom roles.

Account Safety

AutoReach automatically manages LinkedIn account safety with rate limiting, request throttling, and concurrency controls. You do not need to configure any of this- it is fully automatic.

Result Data

Each search result includes:

• Name and headline

• LinkedIn profile URL

• Location

• Profile image URL

Results are queued for enrichment based on your enrichment settings.

Building Effective Filter Combinations

Example 1: CTOs in a Specific Region

• Role: CTO, VP Engineering

• Location: San Francisco Bay Area (resolved from offer)

• Industry: Software, Technology

• Result: Technical decision-makers in your target metro

Example 2: Financial Services Decision-Makers

• Role: VP Finance, CFO, Treasurer

• Location: New York, London, Singapore

• Industry: Financial Services, Banking

• Result: Finance leaders across major financial hubs

Example 3: Continuous Prospecting with Buyer Expansion

• Role: VP Sales (initial)

• Buyer expansion: Enabled with default roles

• Result: Daily automated discovery cycling through CEO, CTO, VP, Director, Manager roles at matching companies

Best Practices

1. Use multiple searches for different personas. Don't try to find everyone in one search. Create separate searches for different roles.

2. Combine filters strategically. Location + Title + Industry yields higher-quality results than any single filter.

3. Enable buyer expansion for ongoing discovery. Set up a search with buyer expansion enabled to continuously find new decision-makers without manual effort.

4. Start with a focused search, then scale. Run a search with tight filters first, review results, then broaden if needed.

5. Monitor quality downstream. As leads are scored and enrolled in sequences, track response rates. Adjust filters if quality is low.

Troubleshooting

Getting too many results?

• Add more filter criteria (industry, location)

• Use more specific title keywords

• Narrow geographic scope

Not getting enough results?

• Broaden your filters (wider geography, related titles)

• Try alternative job title variations

• Remove industry filter to cast a wider net

Seeing irrelevant profiles?

• Be more specific with title keywords

• Add industry filter if not set

• Results are scored by buyer intelligence after enrichment- irrelevant profiles will score low automatically

Search seems slow?

• This is normal for large result sets. Searches are paced conservatively to protect your account.

• Searches run in the background - you can continue using the app.

• Large searches (1,500+ results) may take a while to complete.

Search stuck or failed?

• Auto-recovery retries stuck searches automatically on server restart

• If the LinkedIn session expired, reconnect your account and the search will resume

• Temporary pauses due to rate limiting clear automatically

Next Steps

• Lookalike Audiences: Discover relevant seed accounts, then use People Search to extract their followers

• LinkedIn Content Search: Find leads via content engagement instead of profile filters

• Enrichment Pipeline: See how discovered leads get enriched with full profile and company data