How to retrieve all positions of a profile, including past ones

Question

I have tried several things to be able to retrieve all positions of a profile, including past ones and somehow it still does not work.

I only manage to get past positions of my direct connections, then even those 2 or 3 degrees away, I only see present positions via the API even though I can see all positions via the website.

I tried the technique described here : https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/accessing-out-network-profiles also, and even for profiles which are 3 degrees away from me (so not out of network), this method keeps only returning the current positions. I used the specified headers and everything, still only current positions returned.

Could you please give me a working example of how to retrieve ALL positions for a 2 or 3 degrees connection via API, ideally REST and also Javascript ?

Is it even possible given the current API ?

I guess it should, since I can see the information via the website, it should be somehow available via API...

Thanks.

Answer 1

The API documentation for the available Profile Fields list which fields are available given the relationship with the viewer. Right at the top, there is a table that states that for anyone other than 1st degree connections, with regards to position data it will only return "Current positions only":

So it looks like the public API only allows you to retrieve past positions for immediate connections.