Finding candidates on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator

You don't need the most expensive plan

Sales Navigator is useful, but it is priced for people who source all day. If you hire for a handful of roles, a standard LinkedIn account plus a good search string gets you most of the way.

Start with a Boolean string, not a job title

A single job title misses people who do the same work under a different name. Combine synonyms with OR, add the skills that matter with AND, and exclude the noise with NOT.

For example, a backend role might be:

("backend" OR "back-end" OR "server-side") AND (Python OR Django OR FastAPI) NOT intern

Building and testing that string is fiddly by hand. The Boolean search builder helps you assemble it and see what each operator does.

Use the free filters well

• Open to work and location narrow the pool without extra cost.
• Company size and industry cut very different roles apart.
• Recent activity tells you who is likely to answer now.

Turn a list of profiles into a pipeline

Searching is half the job. The other half is remembering who you contacted, who replied, and where each person stands. That is the part a spreadsheet loses first. When a profile fits, drop it into a shortlist so it doesn't get lost, and let the tool score it against the role.

See the full flow in how it works, or read Boolean search basics for the operators.