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Find prospects with People Search

Describe the person you want to reach in plain words: Swimlane builds the LinkedIn search, ranks the profiles it finds and lets you import only the people you choose.

Before you start

  • Your LinkedIn account must be connected (see Connect your LinkedIn account).
  • Fill in Settings → Personalization. The match percentage on the results compares each person with what you wrote there: about yourself, your business, your ideal customer and how you help. If every field is empty, all results show 50% with the reason "Complete your profile to get personalized matching."

Steps

  1. Open Dashboard. In Find new leads, click People Search.
  2. In Describe your ideal persona, write who you are looking for, for example "Head of sales at a B2B software company".
  3. Set Maximum number of leads with the slider. It starts at 15 and goes up to 100.
  4. Click Search. A progress bar walks through the stages (generating the query, searching, scoring, finalizing). Keep the window open.
  5. Review the results. Each row shows the photo, name, headline or company, location and a match percentage. Hover the percentage to read why the person fits or not.
  6. Import with one of the three buttons:
    • Import selection (n): only the rows you ticked.
    • Matches >50% (n): everyone above 50%.
    • Import all (n): every result.
  7. Swimlane creates a list named after your persona text and opens it.

How the search is built

  • A one-word persona is searched as it is.
  • A longer description is rewritten by AI into a short LinkedIn boolean query: job-title variants grouped together (such as "Head of Sales" OR "Sales Director"), optionally a skills group, and at most one exclusion (such as NOT "Intern"). The query stays in the language you wrote in.
  • LinkedIn returns nothing when a query is too complex, so Swimlane keeps it deliberately short. Be precise about the role rather than listing ten criteria.
  • The query itself is not displayed.

Reading the results

  • Results are sorted best match first. Green means 75% and above, amber 50 to 74%, grey below 50%.
  • The percentage and its reason only exist on this screen. They are not saved on the contact. Once imported, contacts are ranked by the ICP levels of your campaigns (see How ICP fit works).

Good to know

  • You may get fewer results than the maximum: duplicates are removed and the search stops when LinkedIn has no more results.
  • People already in your contacts are not duplicated: they are added to the new list and keep their other lists.
  • Before importing, Swimlane checks your daily import allowance. If it is already used up, you see "Daily import limit reached." New contacts count towards Daily imports on the Lists page; existing contacts don't.
  • The search and the import run immediately, even outside your virtual office hours.
  • Closing the window discards the results. Run the search again to get them back.
  • Importing never contacts anyone. To reach out, open the list or use it as the source of a campaign.

Troubleshooting

  • "No leads found. Try a broader persona." Shorten the description to the job title and one qualifier.
  • "Your LinkedIn session expired. Please reconnect your account." Reconnect LinkedIn (see Reconnect LinkedIn when the session expires), then click Try again.
  • "Search failed. Please try again." Click Try again. If it keeps failing, simplify the persona.
  • Every result is at 50%. Your Personalization fields are empty: fill them in and search again.

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