A big source of revenue for LinkedIn is it’s recruiter focused accounts. Naturally (as in the ad above) they want to make the platform attractive to recruiters. But not all candidates are public about their job searching intentions because they fear their boss may find out.
Now LinkedIn has introduced a feature that you can turn on or off which privately advises recruiters that you are open to new opportunities. In their blog post LinkedIn say “You can specify the types of companies and roles you are most interested in and be easily found by the hundreds of thousands of recruiters who use LinkedIn to find great professional talent.”
The Open Candidates feature, which is currently available in USA, Canada, UK and Australia, can be accessed via the Jobs Home Page under Preferences.
As with an activity you are undertaking when looking for a new job, whilst currently employed, you should be a little cautious with this feature because LinkedIn cannot guarantee your current employer will not find out;
“Only recruiters who use LinkedIn’s Recruiter product will have access to your Open Candidates preferences and career interest information. It will not be added to your LinkedIn.com profile.
In order to protect your privacy, we’ll make every effort to hide you from Recruiter users who may also work at your current company, as well as affiliated companies.
We do this by comparing a unique number (Company ID) assigned to the current employer listed on your profile with the Company ID for recruiters on our network. 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 our platform mapping, then we won’t show your career interest preferences.
We cannot guarantee, however, that every company is accurately identified, or that affiliated companies are accurately mapped on our platform. We also cannot 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.”
That gives you an extra reason to ensure that your profile is updated and accurate, especially with your current employer information.
Do you have a LinkedIn question? Hit reply and I will find the answer for you and may even include it in an upcoming tip.
Have a brandtastic week
Paul
P.S. Clients are loving our live LinkedIn consulting/training sessions, using screen sharing and accessing their LinkedIn profiles so they can see the changes, understand better how to use the platform and have great, personally branded profiles too. Would you like some similar help? We can work on any aspect of LinkedIn that you need and the consulting can be broken up in to 3 one hour sessions over a period of time – click here for the details.