LinkedIn Developer API

2 min readFeb 3, 2025

The LinkedIn developer API is a way for webapp developers to retrieve LinkedIn profiles/information from LinkedIn, such that the information can be used for individual purposes of displaying one’s accomplishments or for a company’s purpose of searching for workers.

In this post, steps are shown for how to obtain the needed information to use the LinkedIn API.

Step 0

Create a developer application in the Developer Portal (https://www.linkedin.com/developers/apps/new).

Fill-in the webapp name
Select a group/company to associate the webapp with. If you are making the webapp for individual purposes select “Default Company Page for Individual Developer”. If you are making the webapp for a company, select the company name.
Select a private policy URL to associate the webapp with. Because LinkedIn data is personal data, it is necessary to document how the user’s data will be used. For all personal data collection and usage, a webapp developer must explain: what data is collected, how it will be used, and if it is shared or sold to third parties. Instead of describing this information in detail for every webapp, webapp developers can use pre-made/pre-approved data policies made by government approved organizations. There are three main private policy URLs: CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018), GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations), and ePR (ePrivacy Regulations).
Select a webapp icon/brand that uses will see when they approve OAuth for the webapp to access their data.

Step 1

After submitting the Access Request Form, the application will be reviewed. To determine if it is approved click on the auth tab, a client_id and client_secret will be created for the webapp developer to create OAuth requests to LinkedIn.

Step 2

Perform the two step process to obtain the OAUTH2 token.

Perform a REST API call using the client_id, redirectUri, and scope, to obtain the authorization_code.
Perform another REST API call using the client_id, client_secret, redirectUri, and authorization_code, to obtain the OAUTH2 token.