Optimizing your LinkedIn Search Experience
Search is an important aspect of the LinkedIn experience and a big part of many professional’s everyday jobs. We recently launched a more streamlined design for LinkedIn Search, with the goal of helping our users, often on the run or at work, to find who they’re looking for both quickly and effectively.
While Esteban’s post from last week focused on the product upgrades within LinkedIn search, I’d like to walk you through the process of designing an improved user experience for Search.
Listening to the LinkedIn community
Prior to launch, we conducted a rigorous research and design process in order to identify customer pain points and potential opportunities for improvement. We gathered feedback from a variety of sources and at different touch points, ranging from site feedback to analyzing site data to see what users were searching for on LinkedIn.
Most importantly, we talked to different types of our users: both in individual think-aloud studies and in group forums, continually iterating based on their feedback. Given below are some of the key design improvements that resulted from those conversations:
1. Simpler and more flexible layout
Our query analysis told us that our users were typically searching by name for someone they know. Therefore, we’ve simplified our default People Search view to make it easy to skim names and pictures and see key supporting information to confirm the right selection. The blue highlights on mouse-over group the information about a person and give quick access to the available actions.
We know that there are times when you’d like to see more detailed information, so it’s now easy to switch to an expanded view, or even design a custom layout, directly from the top of the search results page. You can choose to see more, less, or different information for each result, and your view selection will be remembered the next time you visit.
2. More efficient search results
With over 32 million professionals to search through, we wanted to make it very convenient to narrow it down to the person(s) you’re looking for, or to edit your existing search without extra pages or clicks. We have surfaced the advanced search fields and sort options directly from the page and, like the results views, your sorts will be remembered next time you run a search.
Other new efficiency tools, which you can learn about in Esteban’s blog post, include type ahead short cuts to the profiles of your connections, spell check for names, saved searches, and saved search email updates.
3. More enjoyable experience
Last, but not least, we did hope to make the act of finding your peers and colleagues on LinkedIn more delightful, without compromising on functionality, simplicity, and ease of use. For example, we created a new field called “In Common”. Here we show each of the connections and groups you share with that person, in the hopes of further inspiring that “ah ha” moment, and helping each user better understand how connected we all are on LinkedIn.
As part of the Interaction Design team, our goal is to address your needs and this is a first step in optimizing your search experience on LinkedIn.
Try LinkedIn’s improved People Search now
Please send us your feedback and suggestions so we can incorporate them into future design changes to the site!
Tags: linkedinsearch
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Jeff Herman December 2nd, 2008
I really like the new search experience, and it’s interesting to read the thinking behind it. Great job!
Cari December 3rd, 2008
I like the new search abilities Linkedin implemented; however, I wish you could apply them to the Linkedin Group searchable roster or in the advanced search specify whether or not they are involved in a group. Thanks!
Cindy December 3rd, 2008
I’m new to LinkedIn and this is very helpful. I am glad you are ahead of me in knowing what I need.
thanks
Preston Smalley December 3rd, 2008
Well done! You’ve now unlocked the valuable LinkedIn network content in an approachable and discoverable way.
Maile December 4th, 2008
I love the new search features. It has made it so much easier to connect (and reconnect) and expand my network.
Thank you!!
Carol Kelly December 4th, 2008
GREAT SITE! I am addicted. I am not a typical networker or “room worker” but I find Linked In very cool. I have been invited before, but I was hesitant because of all the social network sites. I went to a Work at Home Women in Business Seminar in Chicago and Tory really pushed this site as being awesome. So, after my husband joined, I joined, but didn’t look at it again until yesterday. I have found old friends, attempted to make contacts, completed my profile, etc…Thanks for making it much more easy for an old dog!
Paul Safyan December 4th, 2008
I find the editing of my profile to be difficult. I also experience frequent “outages” of one kind or another while in LinkedIn.
I like the ability to search for individuals and customers and for people to maintain privacy.
I also agree with Cari’s comments above.
Keith December 4th, 2008
I like many of the improvements. However, I still run across several, that for whatever reason, “don’t” want to network here.
What are you hearing ? I have some friends (folks I actually know) and I’m told they’re
“out of network.”
What is the “out of network” response and the reasoning for it ?
The Right Way to Implement Change « Psychohistory December 6th, 2008
[...] excited that Sarah, our Principal Designer on the new Search, wrote this blog post about the importance of the customer in our thinking and process. I’m excited that Chris at [...]
toki December 9th, 2008
like many of the improvements.
Chuck Dimmitt December 9th, 2008
As a newcomer to LinkedIn, it appears to be an improvement, just based on the information presented. I’m looking forward to experiencing all of the benefits available.
Alain Kaufmann December 12th, 2008
For my part it is simple: New people search is a disaster. I am currently using it to find people I know (but not directly connected). Unfortunately when I select “people from my network” the answer is always “0 result”. To Compare to the 100 people that I had with the previous version!
Tim Miner December 12th, 2008
Glad to hear, see and experience that you take the inputs from the user community seriously and act upon them. Great job on the search redesign. Please don’t lose that connectedness with us, the users!
Michael Dreimiller December 13th, 2008
I have a routine of searching my network for new people from my local area. I do that search a couple of times a week. With the old search I would set “Location” to “In Or Near” to my zip code and I would limit the search to my network and set “Joined” to so “Since my last login”. I always found new people with that search.
However, when I’ve tried using the new People Search beta with the same exact settings there are never any new people found yet I if I then opted out of the new People Search beta and switched back to the old search it would find people that matched those same exact criteria. I tried it again a couple of days ago and it still returned no results but I no longer see the link for opting out of the new search so apparently it’s no longer in beta and I’m stuck with the new search that doesn’t find what I’m looking for.
Is the new People Search broken? If not, what is different about it that is causing it to always fail to find anyone that meets my criteria?
Amani Roberts December 13th, 2008
I like the new changes.
Unless I missed it, is there a way to add RSS option to searches. So if you are searching for jobs, you can just set up your search once, click on the RSS option , and get notified everytime something new in your search parameters is posted?
Excuse this question if I missed it. :)
Thanks,
Amani
Mario Sundar December 15th, 2008
@Amani,
Currently there’s an Email option that you can set up. Thanks for your feedback on the RSS option. Will pass this on to the Search team.
Jim Durbin December 18th, 2008
I noticed that my profile, and that of other connections of mine, no longer have the “greater st louis area” in geography.
In my profile, my zip code is listed, but in my public profile, it just says, “United States.”
This happened since the search was changed, and a search for my name in my zip code no longer turns my name. I have to remove the zip code to make it work.
Something I’m missing in the profile settings?
Alain Kaufmann December 23rd, 2008
Ok,
I have understood why your search engine always answer “0 people” when I request “people from my network”. It is because it now only search until 2 steps connection (instead of 3 before). As the probability that I share a known people, not yet on LinkedIn, with a direct connection is close to zero, this means that the search engine is no more usable to increase my network. And, by the way, LINKEDIN IS MUCH LESS INTERESTING.
The LinkedIn Blog » Blog Archive Advanced Search Operators for the LinkedIn Pro « January 9th, 2009
[...] we rolled out the new LinkedIn Search platform after many months of design and technical work. Listening to the LinkedIn community is extremely important to us, and search is an application that millions of LinkedIn users depend [...]
LinkedIn SuperGuide -Tutorials, Tips and Tools May 12th, 2009
[...] Optimizing your LinkedIn Search Experience From the Official LinkedIn Blog: Advice on designing an improved user experience for Search. [...]
Bob October 27th, 2009
Regarding Job dates in the Profile:
In order to combat growing age discrimination by recruiters and company HR folks job search professionals are helping job seekers craft resumes that downplay/eliminate employment “From-To” dates. The theory is such resumes will then survive initial eliminations and level the interview playing field. (Getting past company on-line application forms is a whole ‘nother discussion).
Anyway – since Linkedin’s app requires the dates for past experience entries this discourages people from either using Linkedin at all, or making clumsy alterations/deletions of past experience entries.
How about let’s make the Experience dates optional, as those for Education now are?
Thanks…BC
Jurjen de Vries November 22nd, 2009
I’ve a feature request for saved searches, the ability to choose any of my e-mail adresses related with my LinkedIn account. Thanks.