You’ve decided it’s time to look for a new job and you know LinkedIn is ripe with recruiters scouring the social media platform for top talent. You want to signal that you’re in the market and open to new opportunities, but you don’t want it to be detrimental to your current position.
Until recently, the most common way to alert recruiters you’re job searching would be to update your headline with terms like “Seeking new opportunities” or “Available for hire now.” The problem is these alerts are instant giveaways to your current colleagues that you’re hoping to leave soon. Do you really want your boss to visit your profile and see you’ve basically got one foot out the door? Not likely.
LinkedIn has eliminated this dilemma with a cool new feature called Open Candidate. Now you can privately signal to recruiters that you’re considering new opportunities without having to plaster it on your profile. What’s more, the feature hides the signal from recruiters at your company or affiliated company recruiters, so you don’t have to worry about current employees discovering your plans.
How does it work? Simply visit the LinkedIn Jobs homepage and click on the “Preferences” tab. Toggle the switch to the on position, and then fill out some brief information about what types of jobs are of most interest to you as well as which industries and locations. Then bam! You’ll now be elevated in search and recommendation algorithms that recruiters use, which hopefully means you’ll learn about more opportunities.
While this new option is wonderful for job seekers and recruiters alike, it’s not being welcomed as enthusiastically by job boards. Sites like Indeed and Monster require candidates to post their resumes so they can actively hunt for a new position in the job postings. Now, with Open Candidate activated, professionals can gain recruiters’ attention without all that hassle.
Will they use these job boards any less? Maybe, maybe not. Active candidates are likely to go through multiple channels to find a job. But what about the thousands of candidates who are open to new positions but not aggressively searching? For these types of professionals, Open Candidate is the easiest solution for letting recruiters know they’re listening, plus it takes about a minute to activate.
Because LinkUp is a job search engine (not a job board) that only features real job listings culled directly from employer websites, Open Candidate will not affect us. We don’t house candidate resumes; we simply provide the industry’s best way to find authentic jobs quickly and efficiently. In fact, we think Open Candidate is a great new feature that will empower job seekers, and we can’t wait to hear more about how it impacts their journey.
Source: Molly Moseley
