How to source candidates on LinkedIn
Most sourcing guides start with the search bar. LinkedIn's own research says the biggest lever is who at your company the candidate already knows, so start there.
By Jerry Feng, Growth at Happenstance. Updated August 28, 2026.
The short version
Search LinkedIn in two passes. First the people your colleagues already know, because a shared connection at your company moves reply rates more than any wording does. Then outward, searching the words candidates use about themselves rather than the title on the job description.
The lever LinkedIn's own data points at
LinkedIn publishes what moves reply rates, and wording is not the largest factor. Its talent blog states that candidates are 46% more likely to accept an InMail if they're already connected to someone at your company (December 2024). The same page puts personalized messages at 15% better than bulk ones. The shared connection is worth three times the personalization.
That reorders the work. Most sourcing starts by searching LinkedIn's whole index, building a list of strangers, then making each message sound less like a template. It pays better to find the candidates who are one step from somebody at your company first, and search outward after that.
There's a second reason to run it in that order. A colleague who knows the candidate can tell you something the profile cannot: how they were to work with, whether the promotion was real, why they left. That's a screen you're getting for free, before you've written a word.
Both passes run on a normal LinkedIn account. What changes when you have no Recruiter seat at all is in how to find candidates without LinkedIn Recruiter.
The two passes, and the filters worth using
Pass one: your colleagues' connections.In people search, the Connections of filter takes one first-degree connection and returns their network, so run it once per colleague near the role and add Past company for the places your candidates come from. Then ask the colleague about the names that came back, company by company. Named companies return five or six people; “do you know anyone” returns two.
Pass two: outward from one good profile. Find one person who could do the job and search from their profile rather than the job description. Their headline gives you the words the pool uses about itself, so put those in the title field instead of the title you are hiring for. Their employers go into Past company. Locations narrows it, and Current company excludes the places you cannot hire from. Skip the Open to work filter, which returns the people every recruiter has already written to.
Doing this with Happenstance
LinkedIn cannot run the first pass for you, and not because it declines to sell it. A colleague's real network is not their connection list. It's who they have exchanged email with for four years, who has sat in a recurring meeting with them, and who is still in their phone from two jobs ago, and only a fraction of that shows up on a profile.
Happenstance reads all of it. LinkedIn is one of seven sources it connects to, alongside Gmail, Outlook, calendars and phone address books, and a group pools whatever each person has connected into one network the team can question in plain language. Ask “who do we know who was an early engineer at a Series B fintech?” and you get people rather than search results, ordered by the weight of the evidence, each with the colleague who holds the relationship so you know who to speak to next.
Happenstance is free. The free plan is the whole product, with usage limits on chat and web searches beyond your network. Pro raises the limits: unlimited web searches and results, higher chat limits, and CSV export. A group has no cap on members, which is how a whole hiring team ends up in one. The recruiting version is on Happenstance for recruiting, the LinkedIn connector is described on Happenstance for LinkedIn, and the no-budget version of the whole exercise is how to source candidates for free. The category this sits in is relationship mapping.
Four sentences, with the connection in the first one
Four sentences. It's short because LinkedIn is read on a phone, and because the shared name is doing the persuading rather than the prose.
Subject: [Dan Osei] said to write to you, [ledger] work at [Vantage]
The colleague's name comes first and the specific work second. The ask is small, and it goes last. There's no company boilerplate and no adjective about the opportunity, because both signal that the message was sent to a list.
Tell the colleague you used their name and, when the candidate replies, tell them what happened. That's what keeps them willing the next time you ask.
What Happenstance can see
Email is read as headers only. Message content and attachments never reach our servers. Yes. Your connections are searchable only by you, the friends you accept, and the groups you join, and sharing is always mutual. Your public profile shows a constellation of named people you know by default, which you can turn off anytime. We never share, sell, or use your data to train AI models. Happenstance is SOC 2 certified and DTI Trust Level 2; the full list of what is stored and for how long is on the security page.
Frequently asked questions
What's the best way to search for candidates on LinkedIn?
Find one person who could do the job, then search outward from their profile rather than from the job description. Their headline gives you the words the pool uses, their employers give you the companies to filter on, and the people they're connected to are usually the same kind of person. Searching a job title alone returns the people who optimize their profile for recruiters.
Should I send a connection request or a message?
A message if you can send one, a connection request with a note if you cannot. The request is weaker because the note is short and the person is deciding whether to add a stranger at the same time as they read your pitch. Either way, name the person you both know in the first line.
What should a recruiter's first LinkedIn message say?
One line on why this person specifically, one line on the role including something concrete about the team or the problem, and one small ask. Keep it to about four sentences. Anything that reads as a description of the company rather than of the work gets skipped.
How do I find candidates my colleagues already know?
Open a colleague's profile and look at their connections, or ask them directly about a specific company or team rather than a job title. Broad questions return two names because that's all anyone recalls on demand, where named companies and named teams return five or six.
Do candidates reply to recruiters on LinkedIn?
Employed people who aren't looking read the message and reply when there's a reason to. LinkedIn's talent research puts the biggest single lift on shared connections, ahead of personalization and message length. The messages that fail are the ones with no specific reason for this person in them.
How often should you follow up on LinkedIn?
Once, about a week later, with something in it that was not in the first message. A second follow-up on the same thread costs you more than it returns. If the role changes materially, that's a new message and a fair reason to write again.
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