Is the Open to work banner making you look desperate in your job search?

There is a lot of debate on the Open to work banner on LinkedIn. You know this one:

Open to work banner

Does it truly make you look desperate? The short answer is likely not. The long answer is that it is nuanced.

LinkedIn tracked their own data for people who had open to work banner vs people who had it privatized only for recruiters and it showed that people who had the banner were contacted more often than the ones that had it privatized or not at all.

Should you have it set up? There are plenty of recruiters who swear by it and say that they look for people with the open to work banners.

You should absolutely try it for a little bit see if you get more outreaches from recruiters. Try it for 3-4 weeks. If your response rate or outreaches don't increase, you can always privatize it again.

Job searching is complicated and the truth is that there is no clear cut answer to anything. Hiring is different from company to company and industry to industry.

What works today or this week might change soon! Just like in life you should try new things in your job search.