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