People search

This page shows the shape query takes in each mode, the fields a people search can filter on with the operator each accepts and what a request looks like. People requests go to POST /search/people. For companies, see Company search.

Writing queries

The shape of query follows the search mode:

Ludicrous takes a JSON object of conditions on the searchable fields, combined with and, or and not. Operators and value shapes are in Business Search query syntax.
Instant and Smart take a plain-language sentence of up to 200 characters. Business Search turns the sentence into one structured query on the same fields and reads the sentence as one of two intents:
- Discovery asks for profiles by role, such as “Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification”. Every search word must match, either in the role field group or in the title and employer fields the sentence names. A profile that matches only on its employer or education, or on only some of the words, is not returned.
- Named lookup names a person, gives a profile URL or lists several people. Matches are ranked by name.
A range of years of experience in the sentence becomes an experience_years filter. A city in the sentence matches either the exact city value or the location text.

Searchable fields

The operator a field accepts depends on the field’s type. Text fields accept only the text operator. Typed fields, such as strings and integers, accept equals, in and range. Sending equals to a text field returns HTTP 400.

Field	Type	Operators	Notes
`current_title`	text	`text`	Use `mode: "all"` to require every word
`all_text`	text	`text`	Title, role and about together
`name`	text	`text`
`about`	text	`text`
`location`	text	`text`	Descriptive location string
`current_company_name`	text	`text`
`current_company_industry`	text	`text`
`past_job_titles`	text	`text`
`past_company_names`	text	`text`	Employer names from past positions on the profile. See example
`certification_names`	text	`text`	Certifications listed on the profile, for example `AWS`
`education_schools`	text	`text`	Schools listed on the profile
`education_details`	text	`text`	Degrees and fields of study listed on the profile
`role`, `company`, `skill`	text	`text`	Each searches a group of fields: `role` covers `current_title`, `past_job_titles` and `about`; `company` covers `current_company_industry`, `specialties`, `description`, `slogan` and `name`; `skill` covers `about` and `certification_names`
`city`	string	`equals`, `in`	Exact city name
`country_code`	string	`equals`, `in`	ISO 3166 alpha-2 code such as `US` or `GB`
`linkedin_person_id`	string	`equals`, `in`	Profile identifier returned in the `id_only` view
`experience_years`	integer	`equals`, `in`, `range`	Total years of experience
`current_tenure_months`	integer	`range`	Months in the current position
`followers`	integer	`range`

Location and employer fields can be missing from individual profiles, and a missing value is not evidence that the fact is false: a profile with no current_company_name publishes no employer. Handle absent or null values without failing the whole record, and avoid filters that silently drop every profile where an optional field is blank.

A people search filters only on the fields in this table. Company attributes such as funding and headquarters are filters of company search, so one request cannot find people by them. To find people at companies that match company filters, run a company search first, then a people search. See How to run a multi-step search.

Example request

Ludicrous
Instant
Smart

A Ludicrous request finds US profiles whose current title includes both cloud and engineer and whose certifications mention AWS, and names five output fields:Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "ludicrous",
    "query": {
      "and": [
        { "text": { "current_title": { "value": "cloud engineer", "mode": "all" } } },
        { "equals": { "country_code": "US" } },
        { "text": { "certification_names": "AWS" } }
      ]
    },
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "ludicrous",
      "query": {
        "and": [
          { "text": { "current_title": { "value": "cloud engineer", "mode": "all" } } },
          { "equals": { "country_code": "US" } },
          { "text": { "certification_names": "AWS" } }
        ]
      },
      "offset": 0,
      "limit": 3,
      "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
    },
)
print(response.text)

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/people", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "ludicrous",
    "query": {
      "and": [
        { "text": { "current_title": { "value": "cloud engineer", "mode": "all" } } },
        { "equals": { "country_code": "US" } },
        { "text": { "certification_names": "AWS" } }
      ]
    },
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }),
});
console.log(await response.text());

Sample responseThe first of the three returned records:

{
  "req_id": "r01c2b3e9fcbe43c5addc134d263e31a6",
  "source": "linkedin_people",
  "meta": {
    "coverage_percent": 100,
    "matched": 26,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 3
  },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "349830f7c438a21b669ef445eb0c664fa5504aba543d962ef49079b91680e395",
      "data": {
        "current_title": "Cloud Engineer",
        "country_code": "US",
        "experience_years": 7,
        "certification_names": "AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner; AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate; Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate; Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals",
        "current_company_industry": "Paint, Coating, and Adhesive Manufacturing"
      }
    }
  ]
}

mode: "all" inside the text condition requires every search word to match. The words do not need to form an exact phrase, so a title of “Cloud DevOps Engineer” still matches. Punctuation between the words does not prevent a match, word order does not matter and extra words in the title are allowed.

An Instant request asks for the same profiles in one sentence:Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "instant",
    "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "instant",
      "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
      "limit": 3,
      "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
    },
)
print(response.text)

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/people", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "instant",
    "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }),
});
console.log(await response.text());

Sample responseThe first of the three returned records:

{
  "req_id": "r59e660e756a04de0a8483e40e2dec8e3",
  "source": "linkedin_people",
  "meta": {
    "coverage_percent": 100,
    "matched": 20182,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 3
  },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "df585dcfa99ea4851162832ece551c15e4aff9e7ccebacf46a4cb76560aeae3d",
      "data": {
        "current_title": "Cloud Engineer",
        "country_code": "US",
        "experience_years": 11,
        "certification_names": "AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate"
      }
    }
  ]
}

A Smart request sends the same sentence and ranks the candidates by how well each record answers it:Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "smart",
    "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/people",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "smart",
      "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
      "limit": 3,
      "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
    },
)
print(response.text)

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/people", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "smart",
    "query": "Cloud engineers in the United States with an AWS certification",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": { "fields": ["current_title", "country_code", "experience_years", "certification_names", "current_company_industry"] }
  }),
});
console.log(await response.text());

Sample responseThe first of the three returned records:

{
  "req_id": "r09f4cacc56c846d68062daced8435a09",
  "source": "linkedin_people",
  "meta": {
    "coverage_percent": 100,
    "matched": 20182,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 3
  },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "d97da1626ee72b552dbf1af4c782f4ecd668cf50d420dbad89e6384c07f5a549",
      "data": {
        "current_title": "Cloud Engineer",
        "country_code": "US",
        "experience_years": 9,
        "certification_names": "AWS Academy Graduate - AWS Academy Cloud Architecting; AWS Academy Graduate - AWS Academy Cloud Foundations; AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate; Cloud Architect Diploma; Developing CI/CD Solutions with Azure DevOps; Kubernetes: Microservices",
        "current_company_industry": "Real Estate"
      }
    }
  ]
}

For the fields each view returns and how view relates to query, see Business Search field views. For more tested requests, see Business Search query examples.

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Writing queries

Searchable fields

Example request

​Writing queries

​Searchable fields

​Example request

Writing queries

Searchable fields

Example request