WSJ Your Money Briefing - On LinkedIn, Some Job Seekers Aren’t Shy About Being Desperate

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Some job seekers are posting on LinkedIn that they are #Desperate to be hired. Wall Street Journal reporter Ann-Marie Alcántara joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss whether the tactic could help land an interview or a job. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exchanges, the Goldman Sachs podcast featuring exchanges on the forces driving the markets and the economy, exchanges between the leading minds at Goldman Sachs. New episodes every week. Listen now. Here's your money briefing for Friday, October 18th. I'm JR Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. You've probably seen LinkedIn profiles that feature the hashtag Open to Work. Maybe the person has a job they want to leave, or they're looking for more work. But for others, the prospects are more dire, and they're using the hashtag Desperate. They've been looking for a job for months or years.

Some of them have come across trends that we've experienced in all our lives, whether it's AI potentially disrupting their line of work, the actor and writer strikes of last year, inflation, all these things. So does telling the world you're desperate for a job work? We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara about it after the break. Some people on LinkedIn are desperate to find work and are letting people know about it. Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara joins me. Anne-Marie, how do people looking for their next job let the public know about it on LinkedIn?

So normally people will turn on this open to work banner on their LinkedIn profiles. I'm sure we've all seen it. It's green and has a hashtag and it says open to work. But in this case, people are using this pink banner that says hashtag desperate to bring attention to their job search. So there's no mystery they're desperate? No, absolutely not.

When did the trend of using this hashtag begin? It started a few weeks ago after someone in the UK, Courtney Myers, got so frustrated with her job search that she decided to put this up on LinkedIn, explain her reasoning, and it just naturally took up a life of its own Did it work for her? It definitely brought her attention You know the post has a crazy amount of repost likes comments. She also has so many messages in her inbox She told me hundreds of messages that she's been trying to get back to People about she has gotten some interviews and potentially freelance opportunities, but no job offer yet

But it's just been a couple of weeks. Just a couple of weeks, yeah. So as we know, it takes a while to interview and talk things out. It can be a long process. So you mentioned that people sometimes use the hashtag OpenToWork. In LinkedIn parlance, what's the difference

between being open to work and being desperate? So OpenToWork in general has this stigma on LinkedIn right now. Some people hide it on their profiles, and you can make it so it just appears to recruiters privately. And there's no banner on your profile. Others put the banner on their profile so that their network can help them out.

But the stigma is basically some hiring managers and recruiters see the open to work as a sign that you are a bad employee. Maybe got fired or let go or whatever the situation might have been. And so it's not good that you're looking for work. Now with the desperate banner, similar idea. It's like even worse to some people that you have this on. It shows that you can't find a job or struggling really hard to find a job. And now you're telling the world that if you leave your previous employer, you're desperate

for work. What brought people to the point of, you're desperate for work. What brought people to the point of admitting they're desperate to find work? It's been a lot of factors. A lot of the people I spoke to in my story mentioned that they've been looking for a job for months or years. Some of them have come across trends that we've experienced in all our lives, whether it's AI potentially disrupting their line of work, the actor and writer strikes of last year, inflation, ghost jobs, all these things that are happening.

What are ghost jobs? Yeah, so ghost jobs, basically what it sounds like a job that is listed either on LinkedIn or different workplace website, and they'd actually don't exist. And so you apply, you pull all your effort into it, and then it's not actually a job that's open. Oh, wow. So it's like a dead end. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, a lot of people are facing a tough job market. Even though the job numbers were good in September in that jobs report, oftentimes we hear the word uneven to describe the current job market. Why is that? Many have told me the job market is just in a weird state right now. We have the pandemic, right? The crazy time that we all live through.

And then now what's happening is a lot of people are coming back to work. Maybe they were caring for their families or children, things like that. And so that's now causing people to come back to the workplace and there's not enough jobs because of other economic factors. It's this weird situation where people really want to work, but there's not enough jobs because of other economic factors. It's this weird situation where people really want to work but there's not a lot of jobs and the hiring seems to happen so slowly. It's confluence of everything that we're all experiencing even if we have or don't have jobs. Now you spoke with

several people who are using the desperate hashtag on their profile. What's the message that they're trying to convey to potential employers? So many of them told me that they are hoping to just, one, let their networks know, again, that they're looking for a job, that maybe a new connection or someone they haven't spoke to will see this post and offer them an opportunity to connect with someone. And then secondly, it's just reiterating that they're ready to work, they want to work, they were ready to work yesterday, and they want everyone to know about it

and hopefully result in a job offer. Any success stories among that group of people? Not yet. You spoke to a recruiter in Indianapolis who said that using the open to work hashtag could result in less aggressive offers. What do they mean by that? Less money, usually.

Being open to work means usually that you don't have a job, so there's less negotiating power and so the company that's potentially offering you a new job, it's like well we can offer them less because they don't have anything to counter with. Or they might have a job and they're open to work somewhere else but then their boss might see it. That is the other part of the open to work situation where it could turn off potential employers because they're like, you could do this to me when I hire you. And that's not a good look either.

What are the people you spoke with say about the fact that they are expressing the fact that they're desperate? Was there any sense that my goodness, I can't believe it's gotten to this point? Absolutely. Was there any sense that my goodness I can't believe it's gotten to this point Absolutely many of them Couldn't believe that they've been without a job for months And so they felt a desperation to post and they felt frustrated with themselves and the fact that they haven't been able to find a job To post in the first place But some of them also mentioned just because they're posting about this doesn't mean they're less confident or brave or says anything about their personality and who they could be if you hire them. And

another mention, you know, this whole job market situation is sort of like dating, you know, and we've all been there. Like dating? How so? You know, you meet with someone, you go on dates or interviews, whatever it might be, and sometimes you hit it off, sometimes you don interviews, whatever it might be, and sometimes you hit it off, sometimes you don't, sometimes they ghost you, and you have no reason or explanation why and it's just, it is what it is, unfortunately. That sounds like dating.

Yeah. That's Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara. And that's it for your money briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up, what's news in markets, and then we'll be back on Monday. This episode was produced by Zoe Culkin. I'm your host, J.R. Whalen. Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy

editors. And Falana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening.