LinkedIn has finally added a feature every dissatisfied worker has been yearning for: allowing users already in a job to look for new opportunities without the worry of alerting their employer.
Called Open Candidates, the new feature allows users to create what is essentially a signal that will only be visible to recruiters in order to let them know that they're open to being contacted about roles, despite already being in employment.
To begin using Open Candidates, simply go to the Job section of the site, click on the 'Preferences' tab and switch the 'Let recruiters know you're open' button to on. You'll then be prompted to give some more information on what field you're looking to work in, when you're able to start, and where you're able to work in order to guide recruiters with suitable roles to your page.
Discretion is key
When you've filled out the form, your information won't be visible to your employer and, usefully, it also won't be visible to affiliated companies.
When you turn on the Open Candidates feature, it will only stay active for 3 months to ensure that only users who have recently expressed interest in being contacted will be visible.
For recruiters using LinkedIn's paid Recruiter app, suitable candidates who have marked themselves as open to being contacted will appear in under a new spotlight tab, making it easier for recruiters to find people likely to respond to their attempts at making contact.
Open Candidates is only one of the new features LinkedIn is introducing in order to make itself a more useful place to find employment and employees.
Another is more detailed company career pages, which will give companies a space to better express their story, their values, what kind of people they're looking for and what jobs they're currently looking to fill.
Not only will this make it easier for companies to show who they are and what they're looking for, it'll allow job seekers to determine whether or not they'd be a good fit in that specific workplace.
Overall, this seems like a sensible update to LinkedIn's services, where one of the most useful things about the social network is that it can be used to find jobs and find candidates. By adding the ability to make a job search more private, LinkedIn is solving a big problem for many of its users already in employment.
