Years of experience and then you're untraceable on LinkedIn

Globally, there are over 870 million LinkedIn profiles. You can also find users on the platform with more and less work experience. Okay, nice to know. Nothing new about that.

Years of experience

LinkedIn's paid Talent Solutions, LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, and LinkedIn Recruiter Seat (RPS and corporate) all have a "Years of experience" filter. This filter is frequently used to select new employees who are either beginners or have prior experience.

This slider runs from 0-30 years+ and can be moved quite easily. If we fully open the slider, everyone should be selected, right?

Let's put it to the test, 0-30+. As a result, there are only 320M+ candidates. Over 450 million profiles are missing globally. So how? This filter has rendered 64% of the population invisible.

What about Australia, for example?

The same test, then only profiles from Australia. Australia has 12M+ profiles. I'm curious about what this all comes down to. Over 5.1 million profiles remain. Slightly higher than the global average. 58% of what you make invisible by using this filter.

I have looked at the data and found two issues:

1. Individuals with no prior work experience are not eligible:

It is annoying for the people involved. If you have 0.0 work experience on your LinkedIn profile and a recruiter uses this filter (and it is often used for starters), LinkedIn filters you out.

This electrician is not found due to his lack of experience. This electrician would do well to add a year range to his profile. To put something from his work experience on his profile.

2. Individuals with more than 30 years of work experience are not included:

And this is the biggest problem of all, the over-50s are immediately filtered out. A shortage, for sure. Use this filter, and you've lost a large portion of this workforce.

Age discrimination? Not on purpose. A filter that goes up to 30 years of work experience and suggests you include 30+ is not helpful.

This receptionist can’t be found due to the number of years. She has 35+ years of experience. I also found 77K+ nurses who can’t be found due to this filter in Australia alone. When I published this article on my Dutch website, Klikwork, I had DMs from people who were thanking me for explaining this. They were looking for jobs and lowered their number of years to under 30. So their findability will go up.

Tips to get around this.

Use this filter if there is no other way. You missed more than half of the candidates. The data has shown it.

You can find these hidden candidates by using the LinkedIn hidden operators. Want to know more about this? Please join the Masterclass LinkedIn Recruiter or Recruiter Lite.