How to Export LinkedIn Job Applicants to Excel (Step-by-Step, 2026)

The short answer

LinkedIn has no native button to export applicants to Excel — not in Free, not in Premium, not in Recruiter Lite, not in full Recruiter. This is a deliberate design choice, not a missing feature. LinkedIn's Help Center confirms there's no bulk export for applicants, and Recruiter's “export” buttons return reduced-field summaries that exclude resume files and most screening question answers.

If you're in LinkedIn right now trying to get applicants into a spreadsheet, here are the three methods that actually work, in order of how much time they save.

Method 1: Manual copy-paste from the applicant list

This is what most recruiters try first. It works, barely, for short lists.

Steps

1. Go to www.linkedin.com/my-items/posted-jobs/.
2. Click the job you want to export applicants from.
3. Click Manage applicants on the job dashboard.
4. Open Excel or Google Sheets and create columns: Name, Headline, Application Date, Profile URL, Email, Phone, Resume Link, Notes.
5. For each applicant: click their name, copy each field individually, paste into the matching column. For the resume, right-click the resume preview, select Save link as, and store the file in a folder named after the job.
6. Repeat for every applicant.

Where it breaks

• Above ~50 applicants, you'll start losing track of who you've already copied. Numbering helps but doesn't fix it.
• Emails and phones are inside the applicant detail panel, not the list view, so every applicant requires opening their profile.
• Resume downloads can't be batched — every file is a separate right-click.
• LinkedIn's UI doesn't show all applicants at once — it paginates and lazy-loads. Scrolling resets if you click an applicant and come back.
• Closed jobs auto-close after 6 months if not closed manually, per LinkedIn's Help Center. Applicant lists from closed jobs remain accessible via Manage job posts → Closed tab, but only if you collected applications on LinkedIn (jobs routed to an external ATS won't show applicants on LinkedIn at all).

For a single posting with under 30 applicants this is fine. For anything bigger, you'll spend longer on the spreadsheet than on the actual hiring decisions.

Method 2: Print to PDF, then parse

A common second instinct: open the applicant list, hit Print, save as PDF, then convert the PDF to Excel.

Steps

1. Open Manage applicants for the job.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list to force LinkedIn to load all applicants.
3. Press Cmd/Ctrl + P to print, then Save as PDF.
4. Use a PDF-to-Excel converter (Adobe, Smallpdf, or any of the free online options) to convert the PDF into a spreadsheet.

Limitations

• You only get what's visible in the list view — typically name, headline, application date, and current company. No emails, phones, screening answers, or resumes.
• Layout breaks during conversion. PDFs are laid out for printing, not parsing. Most converters return a single-column dump or merge fields awkwardly.
• Resume files are not included. The PDF captures previews only.
• You can't update incrementally. When new applicants come in, you re-do the whole process.

This method is useful if you only need a list of who applied, not their details. It's not really an export; it's a snapshot.

Method 3: A Chrome extension built for the job

For any job posting with more than ~50 applicants, a dedicated Chrome extension is the only method that scales. The category includes ApplicantSync, plus general scraping tools like Wiza or Phantombuster that can be configured against LinkedIn (more setup, more risk).

The reason a Chrome extension works where the LinkedIn UI doesn't: it runs inside your own logged-in browser session and reads the data the page already shows you. You don't share credentials, you don't bypass any login, and you don't access anyone else's data.

Why ApplicantSync specifically

ApplicantSync is built around the exact case this article describes — exporting your own LinkedIn job applicants to Excel or CSV. It extracts:

• Name, headline, current title, current company
• LinkedIn profile URL
• Email and phone (when the applicant shared them in their LinkedIn profile)
• Resume file (downloadable PDF) and a shareable resume link
• All screening question answers
• Application date and applicant status
• Work history and education

The free plan extracts unlimited applicants and lets one person review them inside ApplicantSync. Pro adds team access, status tracking, AI ranking, and shareable hiring-manager links — see ApplicantSync pricing.

Steps

1. Install the ApplicantSync Chrome extension and log in.
2. Open your LinkedIn job posts at www.linkedin.com/my-items/posted-jobs/.
3. Click the extension icon. It detects your jobs automatically.
4. Click Extract on the job you want, or check multiple jobs and click Extract Selected to queue them.
5. Once extraction finishes, click Export to CSV from the dashboard.
6. Open the CSV in Excel and apply filters / sort / search like any other spreadsheet.

For a 500-applicant job, total active time is roughly five minutes. The extraction itself runs in the background while you do other work.

What data you can vs. can't export

Knowing what's actually in the export prevents disappointment. Here's the realistic list.

You can export:

• Applicant name, headline, profile URL, profile photo URL
• Current title, current company, location
• Application date and applicant status (e.g., “viewed by you”)
• Email and phone — but only if the applicant chose to share them on their LinkedIn profile or via screening questions. Some applicants don't.
• The resume file (PDF) the applicant uploaded
• All screening question answers from your custom questions
• Full work history and education from the applicant's profile
• Skills listed on the profile (when public)

You cannot export:

• A candidate's email or phone if they never shared it on LinkedIn or in a screening answer
• Private profile fields the applicant has restricted to first-degree connections
• Anything from someone who didn't apply (this is a job applicant exporter, not a sourcing tool — for sourcing, see our roundup of LinkedIn Recruiter alternatives)
• Direct messages or InMail history
• LinkedIn-internal scoring or “best match” rankings (LinkedIn doesn't expose them in the applicant feed)

For passive candidates, the workflow is different — see our guide to finding passive tech candidates without a Recruiter license.

Common gotchas

A handful of things that surprise people the first time they export at scale.

Rate limiting. LinkedIn slows down or temporarily blocks repeated rapid clicks on its own UI, including from inside an extension. Tools handle this differently — ApplicantSync paces itself automatically; some scrapers hammer the page and get the account flagged. If you're building your own scraper, you'll discover this the hard way. Use a tool that respects rate limits.

Closed-job applicant retention. Once you close a job (or it auto-closes at 6 months per LinkedIn's policy), the applicant list stays accessible via Manage job posts → Closed tab, with one big caveat: jobs that routed applicants to an external ATS won't show applicants on LinkedIn at all. The safer move is to export before closing if there's any chance you'll change ATS providers later.

Resume formatting. Applicants upload resumes in PDF, Word, and occasionally pages or images. A good exporter preserves the original file. Worse exporters convert everything to a flat text dump that loses the layout candidates spent time on. Confirm your tool keeps the original PDF.

Screening question answers. Custom screening questions (the multiple-choice and free-text questions you add when posting) are inside each applicant's detail panel. Manual copy-paste loses them constantly. A real export captures all of them as their own columns.

The “applicant count” mismatch. LinkedIn shows a headline applicant count (e.g., “446”) but the number of profiles you can actually open is sometimes lower because LinkedIn hides spam, duplicates, and revoked applications. If your export ends with fewer rows than the headline number, that's usually why — not a bug in the exporter.

Company-policy review. Some companies have policies around third-party tools handling applicant data. Check with whoever owns your hiring workflow before you start exporting at scale. Tools that read what's already in your own browser are usually fine; tools that share credentials or send data to a third-party server need approval.

For a budget view of what your applicants are actually costing you per channel, see our analysis of what LinkedIn applicants actually cost in 2026.

Where ApplicantSync fits in

ApplicantSync was built for the exact case this article describes: posting jobs on LinkedIn, getting hundreds of applicants, and needing them in a spreadsheet so you can actually review them. The free plan handles the export end-to-end. Pro adds team review and AI ranking when one person can't keep up.

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