Have you been having trouble using the NOT operator with LinkedIn Recruiter (LIR) lately? Well I have! After about 5 weeks of back and forth with LIR Support I finally received a confirmation that there is, in fact, a bug. However, there is not an ETA of when it will be fixed. I should say up front that I don’t know how widespread of a bug this is.
About 6 weeks ago, I started noticing that certain searches didn’t seem to be giving me the results I expected. At first, I thought I was going crazy. Typically, when I’m doing a search, I will utilize one of my favorite filters – the “in project” filter – to remove prospects that I’ve already added to the project folder. I do this so that, as I constantly tweak my search, I don’t see the same people over and over again.
POWER USER TIP: From the “in Project” filter type NOT AnyFolderABC
(this will not work until LinkedIn Fixes this bug!)
This is the functionality that stopped working about 6 weeks ago.
Initially, I didn’t do anything, figuring it would work itself out or that someone else would take care of it. While LinkedIn is notorious for removing very useful features, typically it is so that they can monetize the feature in some way. While I may not like it when they take something I often use away, I do understand. Surely they wouldn’t remove this type of functionality on purpose! Since I use this on a nearly daily basis, I found the lack of functionality to be more than a little frustrating. This led me to finally open a ticket. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details, but nearly 6 weeks after discovering the bug, and 4-5 weeks of back and forth with support, I received this email early this week:
Thank you for your patience with this!
We are undergoing a change in systems for our searches. With this change it appears the NOT filter is not functioning properly so our engineers are working on a resolution. I would hope to see this resolved by the end of the month, but unfortunately, with an escalation I am not able to provide an eta.
There does happen to be a workaround for this problem. I also should say that I am not a huge fan of this method as it can easily exclude people from your search without you realizing it. The workaround is to use the Recruiting Activity filters, the check boxes towards the top of your search within LIR.
Workaround: If you select Projects, then “people without”, then from the Within dropdown, select 3 months
By doing this, you will eliminate anyone from your search that has been added to a project folder within the last 3 months. Remember, this includes all prospects added to any project folders by you or by anyone else on your team with a LIR License. If you work for a large organization, there is a fairly decent chance that someone else within your company may have added them to a different project folder. If you do this and don’t think to check, you will miss that individual!
Let’s hope LinkedIn fixes this bug in a timely manner. I know I don’t like conducting searches when I’m not sure if the Boolean operators I use on a daily basis are functioning as I would expect.