LinkedIn boolean search generator
Describe who you are looking for and get a correctly-formed boolean string. The operators are fussy about quoting and precedence, and this gets both right so you do not silently search for the wrong thing.
Comma separated. Joined with OR.
Joined with OR, then AND-ed to the titles.
Current or past employers.
Each becomes its own NOT.
Your boolean string
Multi-word terms are quoted automatically and OR groups are parenthesised, which is where most hand-written boolean queries go wrong.
The rules that trip people up
Operators must be uppercase. AND, OR, NOT. Lowercase and is treated as a search term, which quietly changes what you are asking for.
Multi-word phrases need quotes. "product manager" searches the phrase; product manager searches for both words anywhere, which is a much broader and much worse result set.
Precedence needs parentheses. NOT binds first, then AND, then OR. So CTO OR VP AND engineering does not mean what most people intend. Write (CTO OR VP) AND engineering and remove the ambiguity.
Do not put a space after NOT's target. NOT recruiter excludes the term; stray punctuation around it can cause it to be ignored entirely.
Building a query that actually narrows
A structure that works for most sourcing:
- Job titles, OR-joined and quoted —
("head of data" OR "data director") - Skills or technologies, AND-joined to the titles —
AND (snowflake OR databricks) - Exclusions last —
NOT recruiter NOT "talent acquisition"
Excluding recruiters is almost always worth doing. Recruiters list the same titles and technologies as the people they hire, and they are usually the largest source of noise in a sourcing result.
Boolean in the UI, parameters in the API
Boolean strings are for the LinkedIn search box. Our API takes structured parameters instead — title, currentCompany, pastCompany, school, geoId — which combine with AND across filters and OR within a comma-separated filter.
So title=CTO,VP Engineering with currentCompany=acme expresses (CTO OR "VP Engineering") AND Acme without any quoting to get wrong. Use this tool to think through the logic and refine it interactively, then translate it into parameters when you automate — see the Search API.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work in the normal LinkedIn search box?
Yes. The output is a standard boolean string for the search field. Some operators behave differently in Recruiter and Sales Navigator, which have their own filter interfaces.
Why are my results ignoring part of my query?
Almost always lowercase operators or missing parentheses. "and" is a search term; AND is an operator. And without parentheses, OR binds loosest, so a mixed query rarely means what it looks like.
Can I use boolean strings with the Enricho API?
The API uses structured parameters rather than a boolean string. They express the same logic — comma-separated values within a filter are OR, and separate filters combine with AND.
Is there a length limit?
LinkedIn truncates very long queries. If a search stops behaving, shorten it — several narrower searches almost always outperform one enormous one anyway.