How to Save a Search on LinkedIn

Running the same search on LinkedIn repeatedly is a bigger time-waster than you realize - whether you're hunting for prospective clients, your next job, or competitor intelligence. Saved searches turn this repetitive task into an automated engine for opportunities, delivering exactly what you're looking for directly to you. This guide will walk you through how to set up and manage saved searches for people and jobs, and share a few power-user tips to make them even more effective.

Why Should I Bother Saving a Search on LinkedIn?

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." A saved search isn't just a bookmark, it's a living, breathing monitor that works for you in the background. Here’s what it can do:

• Automate Your Lead Pipeline: Sales professionals can create targeted searches for ideal customer profiles (e.g., "Director of Operations in the logistics industry in Chicago"). LinkedIn will then send you weekly or daily alerts with new people who match that criteria, so you always have a fresh list of prospects to contact. No more starting from scratch every Monday morning.
• Hyper-Specific Job Hunting: Stop scrolling through endless job boards. Build a highly specific search for your dream role (e.g., "Remote Senior Product Manager at a B2B SaaS company with 51-200 employees"). When a job that fits your exact qualifications gets posted, you'll be one of the first to know, giving you a serious competitive advantage.
• Effortless Networking: Want to connect with alumni from your university now working in a specific field? Or maybe you want to find fellow marketing managers in your city? Save a search to get alerts about new people moving into roles and areas that are relevant to you, making it easy to grow your network strategically.
• Competitive Intelligence: You can create searches to track talent movement. For example, saving a search for people who recently left a competitor can give you an inside track on hiring opportunities or key accounts that might be in transition. It's a subtle but powerful way to keep an eye on your market.

In short, it’s about trading manual labor for smart automation. You do the hard work of building a hyper-specific search once, and LinkedIn handles the monitoring forever.

How to Save a People Search: Step-by-Step

This is the most common use case for sales reps, recruiters, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to build a targeted network. Follow these steps to set up alerts for specific types of professionals.

Step 1: Start Your Search

From the LinkedIn homepage, use the main search bar at the top of the page. Enter your primary keyword. This could be a job title, a skill, or a general industry term. For our example, let's look for marketing directors.

After you hit Enter, you’ll see a broad list of everything related to “marketing director.” Your next step is to click the "People" button below the search bar to narrow the results to only user profiles.

Step 2: Add Your Filters

This is where the real power is. Don't settle for the initial results. Click the "All filters" button to open up a panel with dozens of options to fine-tune your list. Here are some of the most useful filters for a person search:

• Connections: Filter by 1st (your direct connections), 2nd (people connected to your connections), or 3rd+ (everyone else). If you're looking for new leads, 2nd-degree connections can be very effective because you have a mutual connection to leverage.
• Connections of: Find people who know any specific member of LinkedIn. This is very useful for prospecting.
• Locations: You can get as broad as a country or as specific as a metropolitan area. Add multiple locations to broaden your reach.
• Current Company / Past Company: Great for targeting employees at specific organizations or finding people who used to work at a competitor.
• Industry: Indispensable for creating industry-specific prospect lists. You can select multiple industries.
• Keywords: This section lets you add keywords for Title, Company, and School. Use the "Title" keyword field to get very specific with job titles (e.g., "Director of Demand Generation").

Example: Let's find "Marketing Director" or "VP of Marketing" (Keywords → Title) who work in the "Software Development" industry (Industry) in "New York City" (Locations) and are 2nd-degree connections (Connections). After setting all your filters, click the blue "Show results" button.

Step 3: Save the Search and Set Your Alert

Once you’re happy with the filtered search results, look at the top right of the results list. You should see an option to "Save search." On newer layouts, this might appear as a small pop-up or a button near your filter list.

After clicking it, another box will appear where you can:

1. Name your search: Give it a clear, descriptive name like "NYC SaaS Marketing VPs."
2. Set the alert frequency: You can choose to be notified of new results daily or weekly. You can also opt-out of notifications if you just want to save the search to run it manually later.

Click "Save," and you're all set! Now you’ll receive an email and/or a LinkedIn notification with any new people who match this exact search criteria.

How to Create a Job Search Alert: A Focused Approach

For job seekers, saved search alerts are a non-negotiable. They do the heavy lifting for you, ensuring you never miss a prime opportunity. The process is similar to a people search but initiated from the Jobs section.

Step 1: Go to the "Jobs" Page

Start by clicking the suitcase icon labeled "Jobs" in the top navigation bar. Use the search bars to enter your target job title and location.

Step 2: Filter the Job Results

Just like with people, the real magic happens in the filters. Beyond the initial search, you can use the filter buttons at the top of the jobs list to narrow things down:

• Date Posted: Look for opportunities posted in the "Past 24 hours" if you want to be the earliest applicant.
• Experience Level: Choose from Internship, Entry level, Associate, Mid-Senior level, Director, or Executive.
• Company: If you have a dream list of companies, you can add them here to see only their job openings.
• Job Type: Full-time, Part-time, Contract, etc.
• On-site/Remote: This is one of the most popular filters today. Choose from On-site, Remote, or Hybrid.
• Easy Apply: A time-saving filter that only shows jobs you can apply for directly on LinkedIn with just a few clicks.

Step 3: Set Your Alert

As you apply filters, you’ll notice a toggle that says "Set alert" (or "Create job alert"). It’s typically right below the main search filter buttons.

Simply turn this toggle on. A settings menu will pop up, allowing you to:

• Confirm the job title and location.
• Choose how often you get alerts (daily or weekly).
• Select how you get them (email and notification, or choose one or the other).

Click "Save" and your job monitor is officially active.

Power-User Tips for Better Searches

Ready to go beyond the basics? Use these strategies to make your saved searches even more effective.

Use Boolean Operators

Boolean search lets you combine keywords with logic to create more refined queries. It works in most keyword fields (like Title or general search).

• Quotes " ": Use quotes to search for an exact phrase. For example, "Senior Content Manager" will only show people with that exact title, not "Content Manager, Senior" or just "Content Manager".
• AND: Narrow your search by requiring multiple terms. For instance, sales AND marketing will look for profiles that mention both words. The `AND` is typically the default on LinkedIn, so you can often just type both words.
• OR: Broaden your search to include one of several terms. This is perfect for job titles. Example: “VP of Sales” OR “Sales Director”.
• NOT: Exclude a term. If you’re looking for developers but don't want interns, you could search developer NOT intern.
• Parentheses ( ): Group complex queries together. For a truly powerful search, you could do: (“Head of Marketing” OR “VP of Marketing”) AND (SaaS OR Technology) NOT (Startup OR Intern).

How to Find and Manage Your Saved Searches

Once you’ve saved a few searches, where do they live? It's simple:

• For Job Searches: Click the "Jobs" tab, and on the left sidebar, click "Job alerts." Here you can edit, adjust frequency, or delete any alert.
• For People Searches: Rerun any people search, even a blank one. On the search results page, look at the very top for a button that says "Saved searches." This will take you to a page where you can manage or delete them.

What About Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Premium?

A quick note: If you have a paid LinkedIn subscription like Premium Business, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter Lite, you get more. Free accounts are limited to a small number of saved searches (historically around 3-5), whereas paid accounts offer significantly more.

Sales Navigator especially elevates this feature, allowing for saved lead searches that can be added directly to lead lists and account searches that track specific companies. For a deeper understanding of your LinkedIn performance, consider learning how to analyze LinkedIn analytics. The core principles of filtering and saving remain the same, but the toolkit and the number of alerts you can set are much larger.

Final Thoughts

Mastering saved searches on LinkedIn transforms it from a simple networking site into a dynamic tool for leads, jobs, and market intelligence. By moving past manual, repetitive searches and creating automated alerts, you save yourself hours of work and build a consistent pipeline of opportunities that come directly to you.

Constantly trying to keep up with platforms like LinkedIn highlights a bigger challenge: managing your entire social media presence efficiently. That's why we built Postbase. After experiencing the frustration of using clunky tools that feel a decade old, we designed a platform built for how social media works today. If you manage LinkedIn brand pages alongside Instagram, TikTok, and other channels and are looking to get your time back and coordinate everything in a simple, visual calendar without the headaches, give us a try.