I hear many talent and coaches talk about the process of finding the right voice-over leads to talk to in order to grow their businesses. Often, I hear that Google can be a gold mine of voice-over leads. “I search Google for the kinds of companies I’m looking for and then….” They explain their process from there.

Can Google be a good source of leads? Sure. It’s by far the world’s largest and best search engine. Stands to reason that if you’re searching for something on the Internet, Google is usually a good place to start.

Except it’s not. Because the thinking is backward.

By starting with a Google search, you’re looking for the kinds of companies that may likely hire voice actors.

Here’s the problem: Companies don’t hire you. People do.

In my experience, one of the most important tenets of sales and marketing is targeting the right voice-over leads. Reaching out to the wrong people in the right companies will get you nowhere and make you look lazy in the process. It will also waste your most precious asset as a voice actor: time.

Early in your voice-over career, you will likely be building your business with more limited time, as a side hustle, often with a full-time job or other responsibilities. The problem is, this is also the point in your career where you need to create the biggest push to start creating momentum. Your time is gold. How you use it and scale it makes all the difference.

The sooner you can identify the decision-maker, the person who will actually hire you, the less work you have to do and the more effective your efforts are likely to be.

Starting your search for work on Google is like starting your search for a great pair of jeans in the mall parking lot. Don’t start there. Start when you get to the store that sells clothes.

But how do I search for people straight away? Don’t I have to find the companies first? No.

Enter: LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is way more than just a “professional social media site” or an online resumé platform. LinkedIn is the world’s largest search engine of working people, with roughly 180 million users in the US alone.

LinkedIn has more than a dozen search parameters, including Job Title, Company, Geography, Industry, and more. So, for example, rather than searching for the kinds of companies that might hire voice actors, you’re searching for the kinds of roles that hire voice actors. For example, rather than searching “production houses in the US” on Google, search “video producers” in your hometown for instance.

Now here’s the fun part, you’ll find video producers with all kinds of companies you’d have never thought of had you started with a search for companies.

Starting with searching for roles makes your efforts more effective, it saves you time and gets you to the decision-makers faster and more effectively.

And it gets even better. Name and Job Title, which look like they can only take one value, can take more if you use Boolean search syntax. Boolean searching is used to help find search results faster and with better targeting. Boolean searching uses operators: words like AND, OR, and NOT. These are logic-based words that help search engines like LinkedIn narrow down or broaden search results.

So, let’s say you want to target audio producers. You can search “audio producer OR engineer” Using operators can, again, expand or limit your search and really help you zero in on the right people faster.

Experiment and play around with search on LinkedIn. Learn to get good at it. You’ll save yourself a ton of time over the course of your career.