For job seekers, standing out in this super-tight job market is tough.
Could the #OpenToWork badge on your LinkedIn profile help your chances of gaining the interest of a hiring manager?
It’s a provocative subject.
You can display the green #OpenToWork banner on your profile photo, which cues your network and recruiters that you’re seeking new opportunities.
You can also opt for the more cautious approach, showing you’re open to work solely with recruiters using LinkedIn Recruiter.
The question I wonder about — and readers ask me — is whether it’s wise to be that public and straightforward about your job aspirations.
Here’s what career coaches and workplace experts had to say.
“It’s controversial,” said Richard Eisenberg, an expert on workplace challenges faced by older workers.
“There are some people who love it and think it’s a great idea,” he said. “And there are some people who hate it and think it’s a terrible idea. I happen to think it’s a good idea for people who are looking for work.”
His logic: “These days if you want a full-time job or a part-time job or gig work, you want to get the word out as much as you can, and you want people to know that you are available and what you want to do and what you’re good at.”
Having the #OpenToWork banner on your LinkedIn profile lets people know you’re available in a way that they might not know if they just saw your profile, he said.
Eisenberg prefers opening it to everybody to see. “It’s particularly useful for older job seekers because it’s another way to say ‘I’m available. I’m interested. I’m up to date. Here’s who I am.’ It’s no guarantee of anything, but it’s another way to say ‘Think of me. I could be helpful.’”
Eisenberg has had new clients tell him they found him on LinkedIn: “I’m pretty certain that having it there has been helpful for the times I have been looking for work.”
Career coach Jayne Mattson agrees. “Absolutely add the #OpenToWork feature, especially now,” Mattson told me. “The more that you can show that you are open to work, the more chances a recruiter or hiring manager may reach out to you. You always want to increase those chances.”
That said, a simple banner on LinkedIn is “not some kind of magic bullet,” said Marci Alboher, a workplace trend expert and chief engagement officer at the nonprofit CoGenerate.
“People use it, whether they’re employed or not, as a signal to recruiters, and use the privacy settings so that only recruiters see that. That’s useful. And if you’re a freelancer who is open to new engagements, I don’t see any downside,” she said.
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There was plenty of agreement here. “It’s not going to hurt you, but if you rely on it as the key to getting your next job, you will be disappointed,” said John Tarnoff, a mid-career professional career coach. “The #OpenToWork banner is not your magnet for opportunities.”
There’s a psychological edge to consider as well. “There is this general feeling that people don’t want to look desperate or using the tab makes people feel vulnerable,” Alboher added. “I would say to temper that, considering the current job market where so many really qualified people are out of work. People who would have been reluctant to use that flag are now comfortable using it.”
But Steve Dalton, a career adviser and author of “The Job Closer” and “The 2-Hour Job Search,” said there’s a risk that some employers may interpret your availability to work as a signal that you’re not in demand or a top performer.
“Fair or not, the fact that you are available and advertising may give them a negative impression of your abilities. I would rather not lead with that,” Dalton told me.
Alboher said she finds the LinkedIn Premium plan valuable. It allows you to “contact people directly, rather than sit passively thinking that someone is somehow going to discover you because you have that banner,” she said.
She advises using a combination of the #OpenToWork, premium account, and an “About” section on your profile that succinctly explains who you are and what you have to offer an employer.
Another tip from Alboher: “What would make people notice you is that if you periodically share things on LinkedIn that show your expertise, that show your insights or that lift up others in ways that show your generosity and your sensibility of helping others — that’s the kind of thing that will get people to look at your profile in the first place.”
I concur. Engaging on a regular basis on LinkedIn gets your profile noticed. And, of course, sharpening your skills to align with the jobs you’re aiming for plus reaching out to contacts to connect you with hiring managers can go a long way.
Said Tarnoff: “If you’re going to use the #OpenToWork banner, use it as a conversation starter, not a spotlight that you have been out of work for six months and are really scared and help me please.”
Dalton added that the badge’s usefulness is limited: “What you’re hoping to happen when you put it up is that you will get incremental outreach — meaning outreach you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise simply because that flag was up. I’ve talked to a lot of hiring managers and recruiters who have definitely told me that this is not a motivating factor for them when choosing who to proactively reach out to.”
If the company is doing the search, they are going to look for objective criteria, such as if you have a particular qualification or have done this exact job before, preferably at one of their competitors, Dalton said. “Rarely does the #OpenToWork flag factor into their decision criteria from all of the conversations I’ve had.”
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The bigger red flag is that “at the highest level, it is much more likely to draw scammers and service providers like coaches and resume writers that do not have jobs than it is to result in incremental outreach from employers with jobs,” Dalton said.
“It invites outreach from sources with perverse incentives,” Dalton said. “You’re going to get a lot of outreach from people that don’t genuinely have jobs.”
And that’s a time suck. “It will take time to pick through all of the head fakes and false starts,” he said. “It will be demoralizing.”
It’s a judgment call whether the chance of getting a promising hit is worth the trouble.
Sure, you can get a lot of spam emails and blasts from recruiters and from people who are not offering anything that you would want, Eisenberg told me. “From my perspective, that’s a small price to pay for the possibility of getting some opportunities that you might not have had otherwise.”
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including “Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future,” “In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work,” and “Never Too Old to Get Rich.” Follow her on Bluesky.
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