LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for professionals looking to network, build their personal brand, and explore new career opportunities. With over 722 million members worldwide, LinkedIn offers users a place to create detailed profiles highlighting their work histories, skills, accomplishments, and more. One of the most useful sections of a LinkedIn profile is the ability to indicate whether you are actively searching for a new job. However, this isn’t always clearly communicated to your connections and network. Here’s what you need to know about how LinkedIn handles job seeking status.
Adding “Open to Work” to Your Profile
The most direct way to signal that you are looking for a new job on LinkedIn is by adding the “Open to Work” subtitle and status to your profile. This can be done by going to your profile settings and selecting “Open to Work” under your name and headline. Checking this box will add the subtitle “Open to work” below your name. It will also add a green open to work frame around your profile photo. This makes it immediately clear to anyone viewing your profile that you are currently looking for job opportunities and open to being contacted about them.
Additionally, the “Open to Work” status adds a section to your LinkedIn homepage prompting you to list details like your ideal job title, types of roles you are interested in, locations you want to work, and whether you are actively applying/searching. Filling this section out helps recruiters better understand the specifics of the kind of job you are seeking.
It’s important to note that adding “Open to Work” is visible to all of your connections, not just recruiters. Some job seekers prefer not to broadcast a job search so openly across their whole network. In that case, you can limit the visibility of the status to only recruiters by changing the audience setting.
Looking for Opportunities Badge
Along with adding “Open to Work” to your profile, LinkedIn also gives you the option to enable a more subtle job seeking indicator in the form of the “Looking for opportunities” badge. This badge will appear next to your name on your profile to signal that you are open to potential job openings or career moves. However, it does not add the obvious green frame and subtitle that “Open to Work” does.
The badge also does not add a job search status section to your homepage. So it is a more discreet way to get on recruiters’ radar without actively marketing yourself as searching for a job to your whole network. You can control visibility settings to only show the badge to recruiters as well.
Set Career Interests
Another way your LinkedIn can indicate you are open to new opportunities is by setting your career interests for recruiters to see. You can select up to 20 specific job titles that appeal to you as potential next steps in your career progression. These serve as signals to recruiters about roles you would likely be interested in should the right opportunity become available.
Career interests are only visible to 3rd party recruiters, staffing agencies, and hiring managers – not your general connections. So it allows you to privately express career aspirations and flexibility to potential employers specifically without broadcasting a full-on public job search.
Engaging with Jobs/Recruiters
Even without explicitly indicating you are open to work on your profile, your activity engaging with job postings and recruiters on LinkedIn can signal your employment status. When you look at job postings, click “Interested”, apply, or follow companies on LinkedIn, it leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for recruiters to pick up on. They can see you are actively interacting with job content on the platform and are likely open to discussing opportunities.
Similarly, reaching out to and engaging with recruiters directly through InMail and Messages indicates you have an active interest in exploring the job market. Recruiters often track when prospective candidates proactively make contact, and will take that into consideration when gauging their openness to new roles.
Groups/Channels Activity
Being part of career-oriented LinkedIn Groups and Channels is another way to put yourself on recruiters’ radars. When you are active in relevant professional communities, it increases your visibility and presence to key players in your industry. They may take notice if you are frequently posting, commenting, sharing content, and liking/reacting to others’ activity. This shows you have an interest in staying on top of industry conversations – a valuable quality in a prospective hire.
Skills/Endorsements
Recruiters also take note when you proactively update your LinkedIn profile with new skills and accomplishments. Adding emerging skills, technologies, certifications, courses, volunteer work, publications, patents, awards, and test scores shows an initiative to stay current and develop professionally. The more you build out your skills profile, the more attractive you become as a candidate.
Similarly, collect new recommendations and skill endorsements from colleagues. This provides 3rd party validation of your abilities from those you have worked with. Fresh recommendations and endorsements indicate you are actively maintaining your network and building your professional brand – both good signs to prospective employers.
Profile Views
A spike in profile views can also suggest to recruiters that a candidate may be open to new opportunities. Employers and staffing professionals often keep tabs on talent by checking in on their LinkedIn profiles periodically to see what they have been up to. An uptick in profile traffic may prompt them to reach out to understand what is driving the interest and whether the candidate is looking.
Keywords
Lastly, recruiters search LinkedIn profiles for keywords indicating a candidate is open to job change. This includes terms like “seeking new challenges”, “growth opportunities”, “next chapter”, “career change”, “job transition”, “ready for change”, “looking to make an impact”, etc. Peppering your profile content, summary, and experience descriptions with relevant keywords helps surface your profile in recruiter searches.
How to Know Who Has Viewed Your Profile
A natural question that arises is how can you tell who has looked at your LinkedIn profile? This can confirm whether your open to work status and profile changes are attracting employer attention. Unfortunately, LinkedIn no longer allows regular users to see who viewed their profiles. However, there are still a few ways to get insights into who is looking at your profile:
- LinkedIn Recruiter subscription – Paid Recruiter accounts have access to see who has viewed profiles.
- LinkedIn Premium Career subscription – Paying for Premium Career allows you to see the last 5 profiles that viewed yours.
- 3rd party browser extensions – Some browser extensions like LinkedHelper and Who Viewed My LinkedIn claim to show more profile visitors.
- Paid 3rd party services – Services like Social Insider and LinkedIn Pro Tools offer more profile viewer analytics for a fee.
In general, having an “Open to Work” status and engaging with jobs and recruiters directly will notify relevant hiring parties you are looking without needing to track individual profile visits.
How to Control Visibility
As mentioned, you do have options when it comes to controlling the visibility of your job seeking status and related LinkedIn activity:
- Limit “Open to Work” subtitle to recruiters only
- Use “Looking for Opportunities” badge instead of full status
- Only share career interests with recruiters
- Toggle your activity visibility and settings
- Use anonymous browsing to privately view jobs/profiles
Using these controls allows you to selectively indicate your job search intentions only to relevant recruiters and hiring managers, without notifying your wider network.
Pros/Cons of Signaling Openness
Before actively signaling you are job searching on LinkedIn, consider the potential pros and cons:
Pros
- Increased chances of being contacted about open roles
- Maintains relationships with recruiters and hiring managers
- Stay on their radar as opportunities arise
- Gain insights into job market and demand for your skills
- Discover new openings not listed on job boards
- More control over narrative if current employer finds out
Cons
- Current employer may find out you are looking
- Recruiters contacting you when not interested
- Need to repetitively signal if you don’t find new role quickly
- Less privacy around your job search
- May receive messages unsuited to your experience level
Ultimately it’s a personal decision whether actively signalling your job search intentions on LinkedIn is right for you. But you do have options to do it selectively and toggle visibility settings if you choose to.
Other Non-LinkedIn Options
If you prefer not to indicate you are looking for a job on your LinkedIn, there are other alternatives to consider:
- Discuss with close contacts at target companies
- Join industry job boards and upload anonymous resume
- Attend industry events and conferences to network
- Build connections on sites like Meetup and Eventbrite
- Let recruiters at staffing firms know discreetly
- Browse new roles fully anonymously
The key is identifying the right opportunities while maintaining the level of privacy you feel comfortable with during a career transition.
Conclusion
To wrap things up, there are clear options on LinkedIn to signal interest in new job opportunities – from an “Open to Work” status to engaging with specific postings, recruiters, and networking communities. However, job seekers do have some ability to control the visibility of their search activities and limit awareness only to the audiences that matter. It ultimately comes down to personal preference based on your circumstances and priorities. But if you do decide to use LinkedIn to aid a job transition, be strategic in projecting the narrative you want to the right people.
On LinkedIn you can actively market yourself as a candidate looking for change, or keep it lower profile invitation-only basis. Either way, a polished, detailed profile laying out your background, skills, and career aspirations will serve you well. As will taking advantage of LinkedIn’s extensive resources for connecting with relevant openings, companies, and hiring managers in your industry. With over 20 million jobs posted on the platform to date, it remains a beneficial tool if leveraged effectively during a career transition.