Data on the LinkedIn “Open To Work” filter

Are people on LinkedIn who are discreetly ‘Open To Work’, actually more likely to discuss job opportunities with me?

This is a question I’ve asked myself on and off, using the popular Open To Work (OTW) filter (formerly “Open to New Opportunities”), with which candidates can discreetly signal to recruiters that they are open to new opportunities without their colleagues finding out.

(Which is different from the loud & clear green #opentowork profile picture, I don’t have data on that setting).

Now, I like the OTW filter. It helps people that, for whatever reason, prefer not to broadcast loudly that they are looking for a change. It helps recruiters prioritize candidates more likely to respond. This could lead to less time wasted and less mutual frustration when recruiters reach out to people who won’t change jobs right now, even not for those unique ‘amazing opportunities’ everybody claims to have.

But I also couldn’t help noticing that this filter, which is only available in the most expensive LinkedIn Recruiter license, wasn’t the silver bullet we all hoped it would be. Was I really getting more and better outcomes using this filter? Or, are these people perhaps getting so many messages that my chance of success actually drops?

So, I did what the professors taught me to do during my Sociology study: gather data and interpret. The data comes from a big project, with similar profiles and using a similar outreach strategy. N= 487. (Ping me if you want to know more about the methodology, but since most people are here just for the results, I’ll jump to that part. Sorry professors).

So, the data.

People who signaled they are OTW had a?53%?Response Rate (RR).

People who had NOT signaled they are OTW had a?35%?RR.

But it gets really interesting if we zoom in to what their actual response was. Because the polite ‘no thank you’ responses are indeed polite, but that’s not what I’m hoping for when I’m headhunting. So let’s look at the responses along the lines of “sounds interesting, tell me more”, and call this ‘Positive Response Rate” (PRR).

For people OTW, the PRR was?14,5%.

For people not indicating that they are OTW, the PRR was?4,6%.

Conclusion

Profiles that have discreetly signaled they are Open To Work were 3 times more likely to have a chat about job opportunities with me. This was quite more than I had expected based on gut feeling.

Now you can snub LinkedIn all you want, but paying some money to be 3 times as effective, that’s a deal I like.

Recruiters who use this filter frequently will recognize that quite some candidates seemingly forgot that they have this setting toggled on. If you manage your searches smart, you can filter for candidates that made recent changes to their profiles. Combining this with the OTW filter should improve your PRR even further.

By prioritizing these candidates, we can reduce the number of recruitment messages sent to people that -at that moment- aren’t interested in that kind of messages. Everybody wins.