Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#1

Post by ashfernandez » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:49 PM UTC

Howdy folks. Has anyone here had success with using LinkedIn APIs to utilize people's Linkedin profile information?

What do I mean exactly? Looking to see if anyone has had success finding LinkedIn APIs to:

1. Pull profile information such as name, company, work history, education (currently, you can do this as a PDF download, but it requires users to manually do this)

2. Pull company information on their company LinkedIn page such as the 'About' section and website

Has anyone had success finding LinkedIn APIs to do this? If so, what did you have to do to get access?

Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#2

Post by FrenchDevRemote » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 7:13 PM UTC

Nope, it's very limited, scraping is the way to go IMO

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#3

Post by JLCarveth » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 7:21 PM UTC

I had to pull my company's most recent posts from our socials, LinkedIn was the only one where I gave up. LinkedIn was the only company that wanted a privacy policy, and also made you apply to gain access to the API.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#4

Post by altdataseller » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

Nope, Microsoft aren't idiots. If they gave away this API access for free, this would cannabalize Sales Navigator and their paid products

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#5

Post by ashfernandez » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 8:35 PM UTC

JLCarveth wrote: post #3

I had to pull my company's most recent posts from our socials, LinkedIn was the only one where I gave up. LinkedIn was the only company that wanted a privacy policy, and also made you apply to gain access to the API.

Oh.. so there is a way to get profile and company info if you go through their application process?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#6

Post by ashfernandez » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 8:36 PM UTC

FrenchDevRemote wrote: post #2

Nope, it's very limited, scraping is the way to go IMO

Any recommendations for 3rd party companies that offer this?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#7

Post by yamumsahoe » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC

theorg.com zoominfo.com repvue.com

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#8

Post by sirspacey » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:46 AM UTC

I’ve worked with a dozen solutions and built several of my own to do this. Buzz.ai is my recommended solution. Great API, handles all the problems for you.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with LinkedIn APIs?

#9

Post by rl1987 » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 1:23 PM UTC

Just use one of the many data providers that scrape (or maybe buy?) LI data and resell it via API (Nubela/Proxycurl, Prospeo...).