How to get #opentowork on your LinkedIn

Have you seen the green ‘Open to Work’ frame around people’s photos on LinkedIn lately? If you're looking for a job and want to add this to your LinkedIn profile photo, it's quick and easy with 3 steps.

(1) turning on the ‘Let Recruiters know you’re open to opportunities’ section via Jobseeking Preferences in Privacy settings
(2) Completing your job preferences
(3) Adding the #opentowork frame to your photo.

​All steps below!

What is 'Let Recruiters know you're open to opportunities" ?

The ‘let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities’ setting activates a section on your LinkedIn profile that is visible either to people who have the recruiter product on LinkedIn or everyone on LinkedIn. And it signals that you want to be contacted about new roles. 

But there there are 2 visbility settings. (1) Everyone on LinkedIn can see it - including your colleagues or (2) only those with the LinkedIn recruiter product. 

*Note - LinkedIn say “To protect your privacy, we take steps to prevent LinkedIn Recruiter users who work at your company and related companies from seeing your shared career interests, but we can’t guarantee complete privacy.” 

They do by comparing a unique number (Company ID) assigned to the current employer listed on your profile with the Company ID for recruiters on LinkedIn. If a recruiter's Company ID is the same as the current employer listed on your profile, or the same as a company affiliated with that current employer based on LinkedIn’s mapping, then they won't show your career interest preferences.

But!

• LinkedIn say that they can’t guarantee that every company is accurately identified or that affiliated companies are accurately mapped on LinkedIn.

• They also can’t guarantee that every recruiter has an up-to-date and correct Company ID, so there's a small chance that your career interest preferences will be visible to a recruiter at your current employer or an affiliated company. 
  
• To find out more, see this very good explanation in the help section in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/76791

Why would I use this setting? 

Quite simply - if you want to let anyone who has the LinkedIn recruiter product (i.e. recruiters in recruitment agencies and in-house HR and talent acqusition teams) know that you are actively looking for work. It's the same as putting a neon sign above your head and saying "Contact me about a new job please!"

How do I activate it? 

​1. Go to Privacy Settings > Jobseeking Preferences

Go to Privacy and Settings: 

​To find this section, click on your profile image in the main menu bar
Sscroll down a little to ACCOUNT
Click on ‘Settings & Privacy’

In Settings & Privacy:

• Scroll down to Jobseeking Preferences or use the shortcut on the left hand side. 

​In Jobseeking Preferences

• Look for the heading called ‘Let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities’
• > click on this heading and it will expand ​​

​Slide the button over to ‘Yes’. It will save automatically. 

2. Important! Next step is to go to your personal profile & edit Job Preferences.

Because you have turned on the ‘let recruiters know that you’re open to opportunities’ button in the jobseeking preferences section, you now have to go to your personal profile and update the 'job preferences' section with various pieces of information and then decide how ‘public’ you want to make this. 

• On your personal profile, you should now have this ‘open to opportunities’ box appearing.
  
• Look for the blue pencil > click to edit ​

There a 5 elements in this box: 

• Job titles 
• Job locations
• Start date
• Job types 
• Who can see this ​

Job Titles
Click into the ‘Add title’ box and start typing in your job title. A list of potential suggestions will appear. 

Click on the relevant one to add it to the list. You can add up to 5 job titles. 

*tip* Don’t just type one job title into this box. Think of up to 5 possible synonyms that you can think of. For example, I have selected both Digital Marketing Manager, Digital Marketing Director, Marketing Director etc.. other possible titles could have been ‘Online Marketing Specialist / Director / Manager’ etc.. 

Locations
Start typing in the location where you would realistically work 

Start Date 
Choose from either ‘immediately’ or ‘flexible’ 

Job Types 
Choose from Full time, Contract, Part-Time, Internship, Temporary, Remote 
​

3. Share with all LinkedIn members 

At the end you will see 'Share with recruiters only’.

​Click the little down arrow on the right hand side to bring up more options. 

If you wish to make that you are #opentowork public to all LinkedIn users (including your colleagues and anyone on LinkedIn) and to add the green frame to your profile photo, click this option

OR if you wish for this only to be visible to people with the LinkedIn recruiter product, click the 'Share with recruiters only' option. 

And then click Save

You will then see: 

(a) confirmation that this has been added to your profile 
(b) LinkedIn will have automatically created a job alert based on your career interests and job preferences i.e. Job titles, location. 
(c) You can create a post to tell your network that you are actively seeking a new job.

• If you click on blue and white box that says ‘start a post’ this will open up another box with a default message created for you.
• If you would like to post this to your network, click Save.
• If not then just click X in the top right hand corner to close this box​

​Next, go back to your LinkedIn personal profile and take a look at the new section (called both Career Interests and Job Preferences) at the top of your personal profile and make sure you are happy with how it all looks.

To edit or update this section

On your personal profile:

• Click on the blue pencil.
• Edit and elements that you need to change. 
• ​Hit Save. 

To delete this section

• Click the blule pencil to edit 
• Scroll to the end and look for the text that says 'I'm no longer open' > Click

It will then ask you if you are SURE that you want to delete your job preferences, as this will: 

• Stop sharing the #OpenToWork on your profile.
  
• And it will delete your job preferences - which means that you will have to complete the job title, locations etc. again the next time you want to set up this. 

​If you are sure you want to delete - click the delete button. 

​And then your profile goes back to normal. 

If you are jobseeking at the moment, and are happy to be public about it (perhaps you have lost your job as a result of covid19, are a new gradudate, or are returning to the workplace after a career break), this #OpenToWork is a definite announcement to the LinkedIn community that you can be approached about job offers which will make recruiters very happy! 

However, this option is not for everyone as some people prefer to be more private about their jobseeking activities. 

But, please double check the 'visibility' setting on your profile, just in case you thought that it was only visible to recruiters and it turns out that it is open to your entire network! 

If you are jobseeking at the moment, check out 2 free videos on my online LinkedIn school with quick tips around making your LinkedIn profile shine! 

Connect with Louise on LinkedIn 

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