The boolean string, then the company count

Syntax for the current-title field

("CFO" OR "Chief Financial Officer" OR "VP Finance" OR "Head of Finance" OR "Finance Director")
NOT (fractional OR interim OR freelance OR intern OR assistant)

Rules:

• Quotes around every multi-word title. Head of Finance without quotes is three separate words, each matched anywhere.
• OR inside a family, NOT for the exclusions, parentheses around each group.
• At most 15 operators per field. Past that, split into two searches (for example one per language) rather than one string that the search silently truncates.
• Keywords are a separate field. Put the chore or the tool there ("outbound", the name of the CRM they run), never in the title field; a keyword in the title field finds nobody.
• The search platform's own filters carry seniority, industries, sizes and locations. Do not write them into the string.

Sizing: count companies

Before anyone builds a list, size the audience. A daily pace of 20 invites needs a few thousand matching companies to run for months.

Company count	What it is	What to do
under 50	a target-account list, not an ICP	widen one facet, usually locations
50 to 500	a campaign	fine for a one-off push; not a daily motion
500 to 5,000	a motion	build the search
5,000 to 30,000	a market, not a buyer	add an industry or narrow the size band
over 30,000	the ICP has not been chosen yet	go back to the facets

Count companies, not people. Titles do not change the company count, and people counts double-count every firm with two matching titles.

How to count by hand, in order of precision:

1. Account search in the paid LinkedIn search product: industry, headcount and geography only. The result count is the estimate.
2. LinkedIn company search: industry, location and company size. Less precise (no fine headcount bands on the free filter), fine for an order of magnitude.
3. A company database the reader already has, filtered on the same three facets.

Iterate on the three company facets only. "40 companies" means widen the locations; "30,000" means add an industry or narrow the size band. Report the count next to the change that would move it, and only then write the people search.

What the search cannot filter on

Two or three facets will not map to a filter: a language, "does their own prospecting", a tech stack, "has an SDR team". Name them on the card. They get judged per person at reading time, from the profile and the posts, not per search. A card that hides them promises a precision the search cannot deliver.