Sales Navigator Boolean Search: Operators, Rules and 20 Ready-to-Use Strings

Boolean search is how you tell Sales Navigator exactly who you mean. "Marketing" finds marketing managers, but also marketing interns, marketing students and people who once worked in marketing. A good Boolean string finds the first group and leaves out the rest.

The five operators

AND, OR and NOT must be in capitals. In lowercase they're treated as ordinary words, and your search quietly returns the wrong people.

When you mix operators without parentheses, Sales Navigator evaluates them in this order: quotes, then parentheses, then NOT, then AND, then OR. Use parentheses whenever you combine AND and OR, so the meaning is never left to the order of evaluation.

Where Boolean works in Sales Navigator

Prefer the Current job title filter over Keywords for roles. "Head of Sales" in Keywords also finds people whose past role was Head of Sales, or who mention it in their About section. In Current job title, it finds people who hold that role today.

Rules that silently break searches

• No wildcards. market* does not match "marketing". List the variants: marketer OR marketing.
• Curly quotes don't work. Typed in a word processor, "head of sales" becomes “head of sales” and stops being an exact phrase. Type quotes directly in the search box.
• Lowercase operators. ceo or founder searches for the word "or".
• Too long. Very long strings (many dozens of terms) start returning odd results or none. If you need 40 job titles, split them into two or three searches.
• NOT on a common word. NOT assistant also removes "Assistant Vice President". Be specific: NOT "executive assistant".

20 Boolean strings you can copy

Use these in the Current job title filter unless noted.

Founders and owners

(founder OR co-founder OR "co founder" OR owner) NOT (intern OR student OR "former")

(CEO OR "chief executive" OR founder) NOT ("executive assistant" OR "assistant to")

Marketing

("head of marketing" OR "marketing director" OR "VP marketing" OR "vice president of marketing" OR CMO)

("growth marketing" OR "head of growth" OR "growth lead" OR "demand generation") NOT intern

("content marketing" OR "content lead" OR "head of content") NOT (freelance OR writer)

Sales

("head of sales" OR "sales director" OR "VP sales" OR "vice president of sales" OR CRO OR "chief revenue officer")

("SDR manager" OR "BDR manager" OR "sales development manager" OR "head of sales development")

("account executive" OR AE) NOT (intern OR trainee OR junior)

HR and recruiting

("head of talent" OR "talent acquisition" OR "head of recruiting" OR "recruitment manager") NOT (agency OR consultant)

("HR director" OR "head of people" OR "chief people officer" OR CHRO OR "people operations")

Engineering and product

(CTO OR "chief technology officer" OR "VP engineering" OR "head of engineering")

("product manager" OR "head of product" OR CPO) NOT (intern OR associate)

Finance and operations

(CFO OR "chief financial officer" OR "finance director" OR "head of finance")

(COO OR "chief operating officer" OR "head of operations" OR "operations director")

Agencies and services (Keywords box)

("digital agency" OR "marketing agency" OR "creative agency") AND (founder OR owner OR "managing director")

("web development" OR "software house" OR "app development") AND (CEO OR founder)

Industry focus (Keywords box)

(SaaS OR "software as a service" OR B2B) AND ("head of marketing" OR CMO)

(ecommerce OR "e-commerce" OR Shopify OR DTC) AND (founder OR "head of growth")

(fintech OR payments OR banking) AND ("head of product" OR CPO)

(clinic OR hospital OR healthcare) AND ("practice manager" OR "operations manager")

Combine Boolean with filters, not instead of them

Boolean narrows who someone is. Filters narrow where and when. The best searches use both:

1. Current job title: your Boolean title string.
2. Seniority level: to drop people whose title says "manager" but who are entry level.
3. Company headcount: the company sizes you sell to.
4. Geography: your markets.
5. Spotlights: "Changed jobs in past 90 days" or "Posted on LinkedIn in past 30 days" for timing.

See every Sales Navigator filter explained for what each one does.

Test a string before you trust it

1. Run the search and open the first 10 results. Are they who you meant?
2. Add one NOT term at a time for the wrong people you see, and check the count.
3. Look at page 20 or 30 too: the first page is the best match, later pages show where the string gets loose.
4. If the search is over 2,500 results, split it before exporting.

To check what a saved search link contains, paste it into the free Sales Navigator link checker. When the list is right, the Sales Navigator scraper saves every lead from it.

Frequently asked questions

Does LinkedIn Sales Navigator support Boolean search?

Yes. Sales Navigator supports AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks and parentheses in the Keywords box and in the Current job title and Company filters.

Do Boolean operators have to be in capitals?

Yes. AND, OR and NOT only work in capitals. In lowercase they are searched as ordinary words.

Can I use wildcards like market* in Sales Navigator?

No. Sales Navigator doesn't support wildcards. Write out each variant with OR, for example marketer OR marketing.

Is there a limit to how long a Boolean string can be?

Very long strings start returning unreliable results. If you need dozens of job titles, split them across two or three searches.

Does Boolean search work on regular LinkedIn too?

Yes, the same operators work in LinkedIn's main search, but Sales Navigator adds many more filters to combine them with.