Search for & Find People on LinkedIn by Name: A Step-by-Step Guide

LinkedIn search by name using the platform

For every method we will discuss hereinafter, you will need at least 2 important pieces of information to successfully conduct your search:

• The full name of the person you are looking for (First and last name)
• Any additional information related to them: Current company, past company, location, etc.

That said, the first and most straightforward way to find people on LinkedIn by name is to use the platform’s own search feature.

For example, say I want to find “Eric Renaud”, The process is simple:

• Step 1: Go to LinkedIn.com and log in to your profile
• Step 2: Click on the search bar at the top and enter your desired person’s full name
• Step 3: If they’re a 1st connection of yours on LinkedIn and/or you know what they look like, you can select their profile from suggestions that appear in the dropdown menu. They’ll probably appear at the top.
• Step 3.1: Or, you can press Enter or click “See all results” at the bottom of the search to land on the search results page.

• Step 4: Click on “People” at the top of the search results page to filter out all other types of content (such as Companies, Jobs, Articles, etc.).
• Step 5: That’s it! You now have a list of people who match your search query where you will find the person you’re looking for!

BONUS: A more advanced use of the search

Once you’re on the search results page, you can use the advanced search functionalities to further filter your results with additional information, if you have it:

• By location: click on the “Location” field at the top of the search results page and enter your desired city or region.
• By current company: click on the “Current Company” field at the top of the search results page and enter your desired company. This will give you all the people who are currently working at that company.
• etc.

LinkedIn search by name using a Google Search

This method is mainly used when you don’t have enough information about the person, the company you’re looking for, or you think one of them can be easily misspelled.

It uses a combination of Google (or other search engines) and the LinkedIn search feature to quickly locate people on the platform. This is how it works:

Here are some examples of search queries you can use:

So, as you can see, the combination of Google and LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to quickly bring up people on the platform.

There are, of course, other strategies you can use to find people on LinkedIn, and we’ve covered a lot of them! So, make sure to check out our guide to a great LinkedIn ABM strategy or our best process to look for companies on LinkedIn for more ideas.

How to scale your LinkedIn efforts?

Now that you know how to search for people on LinkedIn by name using either method, you can take it to the next level by scaling your efforts in order to boost your LinkedIn cold outreach strategy.

The way to do this is by using web scraping techniques to automate the process of finding and extracting data from LinkedIn profiles.

This is typically done through LinkedIn scrapers, which are tools specifically designed to automate the process of scraping data from LinkedIn.

With that in mind, here’s a step-by-step process on how to use scraping in order to scale your LinkedIn search by name:

• Step 1: Choose a LinkedIn scraping tool that fits your needs. Most of them available on the market are full LinkedIn automation tools designed to help you scale your outreach efforts on the platform.
• Step 2: Define your search criteria and create a list of profiles you want to target. For example, you might search for profiles based on job titles, locations, industries, or keywords.
• Step 3: Configure the scraping tool to pull all the desired information from those profiles. This usually includes contact details, job titles, company names, location, and other pieces of data that can help you personalize your outreach.
• Step 4: Run the scraping process and let the tool do its job. Depending on the size of your list and the complexity of your configuration, the process can take from a few minutes to a few hours. Start with a smaller number of profiles to test your scraper before scaling it up to scrape even 1000 profiles.
• Step 5: Export and clean the data you’ve just scraped. This is a key step that will ensure the data you collected is accurate and ready to be used in your outreach campaigns. Remove any errors, duplicates, or other irrelevant information to make sure the data you want to use is accurate.
• Step 6: Store the scraped data in a structured format, such as a CSV or JSON file, and use it as the basis of your LinkedIn outreach. This data can help you personalize your messages to prospects, target them more accurately, and make sure your outreach efforts are efficient. More on that in a bit!😉
• Step 7: Analyze the results of your efforts to understand which parts of your strategy worked best and what can be improved. Use this data to continually refine your approach in order to make the most of your LinkedIn outreach efforts.

And voila! You now have a complete list of people from LinkedIn who (should) match your search criteria and can be used to scale your outreach efforts.

Go further with your newly found leads: Automated outreach using LaGrowthMachine!

Lastly, once you have your list of leads from LinkedIn, you can take it one step further by automating your outreach process.

LaGrowthMachine is a powerful multichannel sales software that allows you to automate your entire LinkedIn outreach process with just a few clicks.

Whether you want to send personalized emails, messages, or connection requests, LaGrowthMachine can help you scale your outreach in a few minutes and get more leads quickly.

So for instance, you now have a clean list of 600 LinkedIn profiles that match your target. What to do with them?

• Upload your lead list to LaGrowthMachine: Before starting your campaign, of course, you will need to upload your lead list to the platform. Once that’s done, our tool will use the information you fed it to enrich and complete the data of your leads by adding things like their personal or professional email, Twitter profile, phone number, etc.

• Choose one of our templates: Then, you can choose one of the hundreds of outreach templates designed by our team of experts to fit your needs perfectly. You can also customize anything from the channels you use to the specific actions you want to take with each step or outright build your campaign from scratch!

• Start with a two-channel workflow: We recommend using a combination of LinkedIn + Email as a start. This is the most reliable method to contact prospects, as you will be able to reach them both on the platform and in their inbox. That way, you can later nurture your leads as they go through your lead generation funnel. You can always add other channels later or adapt the workflow depending on your goals.

• Set up your process: For this example, I would go with LinkedIn as the first point of contact. Start by adding a note to your connection request. Adding a connection request message actually increases your lead qualification rates! Here’s our full guide on how to write a perfect connection request message along with our internal study to back up our claims.
• The next steps: If and when your lead accepts your request, start by sending a voice message. This adds a great personal touch to your outreach campaigns.

• Since we can automate voice messages but cannot add personalization variables (yet), you can immediately follow that up with a message that will include one of our 24 personalization variables available. Something like: “I know that you guys at {{companyName}} are busy so I won’t hold you. You can directly book a first meeting with me at {{Calendly Link}}.”

• Then you can set up one last email as a reminder in case they don’t respond, as a last-ditch effort to reach them.
• In case they don’t accept your LinkedIn request: In case the LinkedIn route didn’t work, you will use the email LaGrowthMachine found for you to reach out. Now, of course, you will use a bit more formal language since this is a more professional context. But you’re basically saying the same thing you put in your voice message!
• Care for your copywriting: I won’t get into the sea of tips here, we have a full guide on sales copywriting for you to check out. Just keep it simple and always, always, always add a clear call-to-action to your emails as well as your LinkedIn messages!
• Use the Inbox feature: LaGrowthMachine offers you access to a multichannel Inbox, where you can monitor the progress of your entire set of interactions with every single lead. It’s an easy way to keep track of your progress and respond to each lead via LinkedIn message or email.

• Analyze your progress and iterate: Finally, you can always go back and analyze the performance of your campaigns to see what worked and what didn’t. From there, you can iterate and improve your process.

Here’s what the workflow should look like in the end:

And there you have it! You are now fully equipped to not only search for people by name on LinkedIn but also to go further by running successful outreach campaigns with LaGrowthMachine! So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and give it a try, it’s free for the first 2 weeks!

Happy findings! 🙂