When you’re looking for a new job, it may seem obvious to let as many people know as possible. But career experts differ in their opinions on LinkedIn’s “open for business” banner — the green sign that appears just below your photo if you choose to activate it.
“It’s the biggest red flag” in a job candidate, says Nolan Church, a former Google recruiter and current CEO of the salary data firm Fair competition.
“There’s one obvious truth in the world of recruiting: The best people aren’t looking for work,” he says, and therefore those people wouldn’t advertise that they’re looking for work either. Former Amazon recruiter and current career coach Lindsay Mustain do you agree.
When it comes to recruiting, it’s all about power dynamics, she says. Recruiters want to want you, not the other way around. With that flag up, “because you need something from me, that means I have the power in this conversation,” she says. And that can be a turn-off.
But not all career experts agree, and LinkedIn’s own data doesn’t necessarily back this up. Here’s how the site has found the banner affects job seekers.
LinkedIn introduced the “open for work” banner during the Covid-19 pandemic in June 2020, when millions of people found themselves out of work in a matter of weeks. The company had already been offering a feature to privately alert recruiters when someone was looking for work, but the pandemic seemed to signal the need for something more public, a LinkedIn spokesperson told JOBsNews Make It.
The symbol is currently very popular. According to LinkedIn, it is currently used by more than 33 million people.
LinkedIn can’t know exactly how many job openings have been generated through the use of the banner (it can’t see private messages between people), but it has found that people who activate it are twice as likely to receive a message from a recruiter. Those people are also 20% more likely to receive messages from the LinkedIn community at large, some of them messages about job openings at the people’s companies.
One advantage of using the banner is that smaller companies that don’t have the budget for the recruiter version of LinkedIn can see who’s looking for a job.
When By Angelina Darrisaw Executive and leadership coaching firm C-Suite Coach was hiring, and the banner “was something that just made searching for candidates a lot easier,” she says.
“For smaller companies, it can be very helpful in identifying new talent,” he says, adding that “you determine the quality of talent in the interview process, not when they raise their hand and say, ‘Hi, I’m available.'”
Ultimately, it may come down to a question of cultural fit. Some employers find the sign helpful, while others dislike it. “It’s like a selection of opportunities so you can find the right one for you,” Darrisaw says.
Regardless of the banner, what matters most is what’s on your LinkedIn profile: a list of your previous and current titles, your accomplishments in each role, keywords relevant to your jobs, prominent links to some of your work, and activities that show you’re engaged in conversations about your industry.
“If you’re ‘open to work’ but your profile is a wasteland, it’s not going to make any difference at all,” says the career coach. Phoebe Gavin“Because even if a recruiter finds you, they’re not going to learn anything useful.”
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