Should you post that you’re OpenToWork? A tale of two labor markets | Hacker News Reader

Should you post that you’re OpenToWork? A tale of two labor markets

interviewing.io

56 pointsleeny66 comments

In software we call this a “micro-optimization”… Something that programmers waste a lot of time fussing with while ignoring the factors that dominate the overall performance. Fiddle with LinkedIn if you want, but understand that it probably won’t make a significant difference either way.

This pretty much sums it up. There's about ten other things that are self-evidently more important in a job search than this.

A long time ago I spent a little while debating whether listing my middle initial on my resume would make it look "more professional"

Just watch it with the full middle name, which has a serial killer ring (jk (mostly)).

Maybe true in most cases, but adding a somewhat niche skill set to my Linkedin profile late last year almost immediately yielded me an attractive job offer.

Unfortunately that's the appeal (and basically the value proposition) of linkedin - it's social media dressed up to make you feel like you're doing something, when you're really just polishing a turd (as it were). Anything is better than spending time there, if you want a job or clients or whatever, but it's the easiest thing to do so people keep coming back.

I was able to catch myself before doing this, but sort of a cautionary tale how bias has sneaked into my thinking the last few months...

Friend of mine has a good job - however the company conducted layoffs and cut most of her team, with her being one of the exceptions so she has since been burdened with the weight of the roles of the laid off.

Given her morale quickly ended up in the shitter, she asked me to put out feelers to see if I knew of anyone hiring. I went to post on LinkedIn saying (without naming her of course) that I had a very talented friend looking for a new role. The weird part is that I almost made it a point to mention that she was still currently employed.

This is totally unfair thinking given current market trends. Lots of good people have been laid off because they were in the wrong barn at the wrong time. I know this, but I can't help but allow the question to float around in the back of my head, "well WHY was this person laid off, was it performance related at all or were they just unlucky?"

I'm sure I'll be laid off at some point in the future (again), and I probably wouldn't mark myself as OpenToWork. I'd be open about current employment status, but probably wouldn't broadcast it.

I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with admitting we as humans have these kinds of pre-selection social biases baked into us as a survival trait. We just have to be conscious of it and try to fight it when we sense it working against our goals, especially in a hiring context.

That said what you did for your friend was perfectly reasonable knowing full well many people have these biases and will not make the effort to fight them consciously.

The article essentially claims that OpenToWork is generally considered to be a negative indicator among hiring managers: If you're looking for a job, it's better to not mark yourself as open to work, otherwise HMs will judge you negatively.

Is that actually a view that many/most hiring managers have?

That seems completely insane to me. My view was that OpenToWork == please feel free to contact me about new opportunities, I'm willing to switch jobs or take on contract work. But a number of HN commenters here appear to have the viewpoint that OpenToWork == you're an incompetent buffoon who has been utterly unable to get anyone to hire you, so I'm not even going to consider you for this position. Wtf? Yes, all the incompetent buffoons will be permanently OpenToWork, but I really don't think it's reasonable to make that assumption in the opposite direction.

"I refuse to join any club that would have _me_ as a member" energy

I'd sum up that train of thought like this... A recruiter who comes back to the hiring manager with "this person is a superstar at [competitor] and we can steal them away" is a more persuasive argument, as well as a feather-in-the-cap for the recruiter, as opposed to, "this person is, well, Open To Work at the present time." At the very least, in the first case, you have to move quickly, which is desirable to the recruiter.

Or another way: imagine visiting a foreign city and there is an extremely busy restaurant and a mostly empty one. You're likely to go to the busy one first and ask if it's possible to get a table... the hostess says "normally no, but we just had a cancellation and its yours right now." Score! A story you'll tell all your friends. Getting a table at the empty restaurant... ehhh, whatever.

This isn't a comparison of whether adding #OpenToWork to your profile changes the likelihood of being hired. It's a comparison of whether people who chose to add OpenToWork to their profiles were more likely to be hired.

It's totally possible that one of the populations is more/less hireable than the other, and OpenToWork is a correlated, but not causal factor.

I think that's exactly what the article is implying.

Which is a signal to hiring managers to not treat #OpenToWork as a negative signal under current conditions.

I left it on for awhile as a signal to my employer that I was willing to jump ship. I will say that I was pretty straightforward with my employer about what I was looking for, and started bringing it up regularly.

I eventually got an offer and my employer counter-offered.

Turns out no one even noticed until I showed up with an offer in hand. I even asked out to my boss, "didn't you see that I'm '#OpenForWork' on LinkedIn?"

(Basically, I was hired as a contractor because my offer as W2 was below market rate. The contractor phase was supposed to be short, but after it dragged out too long I needed to either make market rate as a W2 or move on.)

Mad props for taking this into your own hands and for being straight with your org. Also, fine username (former VBA language PM representing).

Yeah, the first time I signed into a dial-up BBS it asked me for a handle. I was 13 and didn't realize I'd have to make one up.

I looked down and my GWBasic manual was sitting in front of me, so I became GWBasic. I didn't put much thought into it, but I really, really liked the name and kept using it.

I still have my GWBasic manual on the shelf, too. I think I claimed "gwbasic" on Hacker News years ago but lost the password. It looks like the username is freed up, but I don't want to loose my karma.

Don't. It makes you look desperate. Use some kind of other mechanism to broadcast if you must, but if you put that on your Linkedin profile pic it is not a good look.

Exactly this. It's like panhandling; it doesn't matter how many other people are out there on street corners, it's still a bad look and I'm still going to wonder how you can't at least hold down a job at Burger King.

I don't assume that flag indicates the person is jobless. The person working BK while looking for a white collar job might well use it.

You don't know how many talented people you passed up because of this bias. Almost painful to read. You have no idea what that person is going through yet you equate them to a line cook at BK? Wow.

It's a tough question OP asked, because there are a lot of people out there really hurting over their work situation. My comment was not to indicate that people who are looking for employment are somehow lesser. It's really about the tactics for getting a job. Getting hired is about convincing someone to choose you. We all know that the reality of a person is endlessly complex, and many people who deserve jobs have a hard time getting hired. So the question was simple... does this tag on linkedin help or hurt?

When you create a sense of availability it goes entirely against the feeling of scarcity. If you see an unopened loaf of bread on the sidewalk you're much less likely to take it home and make a sandwich out of it. We all know why. You wonder what's wrong with it.

Don't act like that loaf of bread on the sidewalk. Act like the loaf on the shelf. Same loaf.

What words would you use to describe someone who looks down on others because they're actively looking for a job?

The three that come to mind for me are: "cynical", "elitist", and "asshole"

Pointing out that an action makes one look desperate is not the same thing as looking down on a person.

No, but holding the very opinion that people who do X look desparate (to whom? it's a subjective statement) indicates elitism.

Again, I don't personally hold that opinion. But you have to play the game and get past the recruiters who may.

So you don't think it looks desparate, but you assume it looks desparate to other people?

Indeed, that's not elitism. Maybe just a projection of what you fear people would think about you if you posted it? By the same logic, does someone opening a Tinder account look desparate to potential partners?

Right, the recruiters that would think such a thing are what you say. But they are the gatekeepers. Name call me all you want, it won't change that fact. But it feels good I bet!

I makes it look like you enthusiastically want a job?

As opposed to ? Only sorta want a job?

It’s funny as there is so much talk about being “passionate about X” but here we don’t want to look very passionate.

Yeah well passion is not the same thing as desperation to get just any job to pay the bills with.

> as desperation to get just any job to pay the bills with

I find that a strange thing to determine from what someone does with their linkedin profile ...

Then it would blow your mind to learn what recruiters determine when they look at your social media activity.

Maybe I'm a prude, but I think there should be a discussion of variance in an article that is basically just a bunch of words wrapping a comparison between two proportions.

Think of all the content marketing this excludes though!

Nah, you're not. I often find myself wanting more data and stats when I read the interviewing.io blog as well.

Forgetting to control for relative difference in quality of candidates between the two pools.

"quality of candidate" is likely highly correlated with being employed or not

The difference in quality of candidates was the whole point of the post (title is misleading).

It's so fucking dumb that a worker has to show fealty to a corporation when they want to work there, as if they are blessed for having the opportunity to labor on shitty code (or whatever) all day, and if they look for other work they're a fucking traitor and looked down upon. Meanwhile, if company profits are up but interest rates are rising 25 bps over the next year, they can just lay off 10,000 workers and it's just "doing business things".

I am "open to work" on LinkedIn and elsewhere, and if a company or hiring manager doesn't like it then they can go fuck themselves. Note: I have a great job currently.

Further, "open to work" doesn't mean I'm fucking begging for you to hire me, it means I'm open to opportunities that might come up when I'm specifically not actively looking! I've had several good interviews come from random people finding my posts about my industry on HN or seeing my "open to work" status on LinkedIn and emailing me.

Man, this is not personal. It is just business.

If you're looking elsewhere and didn't even try to bring your issues to as your manager, of course I'll preemptively get rid of you as fast as you can because our team have commitments and long term goals and I'd prefer not to run the risk of you jumping ship suddenly and letting the team one hand short.

I don't own the company. I have this single piece of things that I am responsible for along with our team, and I'll do my best to ensure our teams do those things as best as we can, not only because I have bills to pay, but because all of your colleagues also have their bills to pay.

Yeah, I agree with you that probably we're all exploited, the bureaucracy is stupid and inefficient, our C-level-Gods are a bunch of narcissist self-centered jerks and jerkerettes. But in the end of the day, we are just a bunch of fucking soldiers in the front line trying to survive.

I am specifically saying that I am not currently looking, however I support the "open to work" movement and indicate it for myself, in case something interesting comes along that I wouldn't otherwise find out about. If you're a manager and going to get rid of a great employee just because they are "looking elsewhere", then I probably would not want to work of you anyways. My current manager doesn't mind that I am always looking around, because he knows I like working where I am and he knows I feel supported and not just a cog in a machine.

The post and some comments seem to be assuming that whether you flip this bit or not can effect your chances of getting hired. Maybe, or maybe they just found a correlation, that people more or less hireable for other reasons are more or less likely to flip this bit, and nobody actually pays attention at allto whether the bit is flipped or not, the same person choosing to flip the bit or not would not effect their chances. Which seems plausible to me. Or some combination. The data analysis as given doesn't give us a way to pick from these explanations.

Broadcasting your need to any poor soul who stumbles across your post does not sound like the ideal way to get the job you want. It does sound desperate like you have no skills and will take whatever is offered.

I've never even had a recruiter that could find me the job I wanted. It's up to you to find that job and do what it takes to meet those qualifications.

You can find that job through the easily searchable job listings that cover the internet - or through your personal network - but you're your best advocate here.

Well, there's an idea that recruiters and LinkedIn use OpenToWork as a signal that you might actually respond. But the utility of that is somewhat questionable at times, using logic related to what you say: if a candidate is hoping to speak with a recruiter in 2021, when every tech company is seeing record breaking demand, there's probably something wrong with the candidate.

In 2023, where every tech company is only seeing normal demand and normal growth but laying off thousands, that inference is less valid.

My counter point is that most recruiters have a much smaller fishing pond these days. If you want the best then there is a high chance you'll have to find it yourself as it might be outside the view/contracts of the recruiter you pick.

Your ability to search and sell yourself only becomes more valuable in tight markets.

I don’t believe that marking oneself “open to work” in LinkedIn is a better signal of response as opposed to just submitting one’s CV, but I can see how it can rake in recruiter invitations to apply for high-paying jobs if you’re some kind of a celebrity or expert in your field.

> I've never even had a recruiter that could find me the job I wanted.

I have, a few times. But it's a recruiter that I've been working with for over 20 years, and they know me well, know what my strengths and interests are, etc. Even when they cold-call me asking if I might be interested in a position, they already know that the position will interest me.

That said...

> you're your best advocate here.

Is 100% true. Nobody knows or cares about your needs as much as you do. Even my good recruiter is in it for their own financial interests, not mine, in the end.

Emphasis on "a few". I can count the number of recruiters I've found worth keeping in my network in the long-term on one hand.

Agreed. I've found exactly one over a very long career, which is why I stick with them.

I hate job-seeking or applying. I definitely prefer to be contacted by recruiters.

Fascinating. I think the key analysis here might have a flawed methodology though. So those who used "#opentowork" on LinkedIn passed fewer interviews... But is that because the hiring managers/panels saw their LinkedIn profiles and saw it as a red flag, or is that because people who used "#opentowork" were more desperate already from failing interviews?

It's categorically unfair, but everyone says it when the "teacher isn't looking": Tech companies are just riding the wave to get rid of low performers and troublemakers while they can. Signalling that you're part of that group (and I know it's unfair, I already said that) is unlikely to work to your advantage, in my view. It's a signal to the counterparty that they have leverage over you. It's going to attract people who want/need that leverage disproportionately. It probably will increase the raw number of contacts you make, but for the reasons above, I would avoid doing it until I crossed some threshold of "desperation".

> Tech companies are just riding the wave to get rid of low performers and troublemakers while they can

It is just an anecdote, a single data point, but in the company I work for, the criteria seemed to be cutting first the folks hired more recently.

In my team itself the newest guy was cut and it was a shock to me, because he was really, really good and there were some obvious low performers that have survived so far, apparently just because they have been here for a long time.

I knew of one or another case of a couple notorious low performers being laid off in other teams, but this was the exception rather than the rule: Probably those guys were already on their way to the guillotine on their PIPs and the layoffs just coincided in time with this.

I wonder how "opentowork" affects salary negotiations? It certainly puts the candidate in a lower power position, it's not hard to imagine many companies offering less to people who signal they are unemployed.

Really, I don't believe that "Open to Work" label makes too much of a sizable difference in our field for the better or worse, it is probably a non-issue.

Recruiters never really cared if you are looking for work or not. I doubt recruiters filter their searches by this label.

No recruiter ever: "Oh, this guy is not Open to Work, better not to contact him, let's move to the next"

Actually, we could have a "Please do not contact, not open to work" label, and I am pretty sure you'd still be contacted several times a week by recruiters with barely, if any, reduction in the number of messages.

Sounds to me like in a strong job market, the people who bother to set themselves as #OpenToWork are those either having more trouble getting a job, or are already in a decent job and just shopping around.

In a tough market following layoffs, more people in general are going to be #OpenToWork, even strong candidates who didn’t need to openly job shop before, and those looking for work are more likely to take an offer even if it isn’t perfect.

It’s still an interesting indicator of the state of the job market.

Anecdotally I've had more recruiters reach out to me for potential jobs when I have the Open to work badge. Why not have it on all the time even if you are currently employed, especially if you are well performing. Would that not be an incentive for your current employer to boost pay/bonus to retain?

Probably not... tbh, unless I'm looking, I stay the hell away from LinkedIn generally. What got me even considering a few jobs ago was evaluating some of their eLearning courses that mgt had wanted people to make use of... Not the best idea imo. So, you're going to push your self-motivated employees to a site that centers around career connections and recruiters?

In the end, I don't think most managers care that much until it's too late. Not all, but enough.

Good post, though with the graphic, I do think this is one of those cases when the y-intercept should start at zero. The graphic does make a 7% difference look like a 3x difference. Same thing for the previous interviewing.io post on whether to list certs on LinkedIn.

And when it is done there should be some sort of visual indication anyway. I was taught to squiggle the bottom of the axis line to show it's non-linear/skipping a bit. You could also rule e.g. every 50, so here starting at 40 you'd notice the uneven rules. (Much like how nobody uses a log scale and then rules only the decades.)

Maybe it's the fact that I have a lot of recruiter contacts on LinkedIn, or maybe it's my engineering field, but I disagree with a lot of the comments here. In the past #opentowork has been a huge help even up until I started my latest role in November. I've never had to be worried about finding a job except when I left government work for private sector.

The amount of recruiters that would reach out once I set myself to open to work was beneficially and notably more significant and I wouldn't have had nearly the number of opportunities presented if it wasn't for that.

I've done this both while still employed and after quitting a position without any noticable difference.

This is a tangent, but dropping resumes to companies directly has proven to be ridiculously time consuming and ineffective for a lot of reasons. If I can get a phone screen, which happens at a pretty decent rate with a recruiter that reaches out first, I've rarely had an issue getting to the next round. There's some pretty good opportunities I've been given just taking cold calls from recruiters, and #opentowork has played a big role in that.

FWIW, my strategy has been to apply to a few companies I want to work at directly, turn on open to work, take recruiter calls while I wait on the companies I initially targeted to respond. I'll focus ~75% of my effort on my targets and use everything else as a backup or opportunity to discover some companies I wasn't aware of.

When I was a hiring manager, the hashtag meant nothing to me. I'd ask everyone why they're leaving their current position and what they expect to accomplish at my company just the same. I'm not getting your performance review from your last company, so all I can go off of is what you tell me anyways. Maybe some references, but those are marginally reliable at best. If you're denying candidates based on a hashtag or profile flair like this you probably shouldn't be in that position, you're not assessing the candidate objectively.

I don't get the "desperate" signal some people are claiming this to be either. If you're looking for a job, why not face the large end of the funnel towards your input? I don't mean any offense, but just my internal take, it comes off as a pride thing to me where you think too highly of yourself to allow external help. It seems like a self limiting outlook with little upside.

That all said, I don't think the numbers in the article have any easily actionable significance. It's a great conversation piece and something to mull over, but there isn't enough information to draw real conclusions on especially given the social and economic changes over just the past few years.

I think similarly.

I hate the hassle of applying to jobs, even searching for them. It is far more practical to me to be contacted by recruiters, then filter what really interests me and move forward from that.

If nothing else, having been recruited puts you in a better position, negotiation-wise, from the beginning.

I always have it OpenToWork. Don’t see any meaningful downside.

tldr: in 2021, 'open to work' was a negative impact, and in 2023, it's a positive impact.

I suspect it will revert to a negative or neutral impact by 2024.

That isn't quite the conclusion the article draws though. Most people would interpret "positive/negative" impact as meaning whether the badge will help or hurt you in your job search.

Instead, the article evaluates whether engineers with the badge are higher or lower skilled than average.

As such, the only conclusion you could really draw is if you're a hiring manager, you should not view an "Open to Work" badge as a negative signal for a candidate.

> article evaluates whether engineers with the badge are higher or lower skilled than average.

It doesn't even do that, really. Unless you expand to ".. than average performance at a particular type of interviewing"

No. Never.

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