Job hunting on LinkedIn just got a lot more discreet with Open Candidates, allowing people to seek new employment without tipping off their current employer.

Ideally, one would feel comfortable leaving their current place of employment after they have already secured another position at a different company. However, searching for a job while still employed elsewhere is not always easy and some employers may not take it too well to find out from a third party such as LinkedIn that one of their employees is actively looking for another job.

With this in mind, LinkedIn is now making it easier to look for a job on the down low, without your current employer finding out.

Ironically, the initiative is called Open Candidates and allows users to privately let headhunters and recruiters know that they're looking for new career opportunities.

How To Use LinkedIn Open Candidates

To take advantage of this new feature, just go to your LinkedIn Jobs home page and access "Preferences" to toggle on the feature. From there, add relevant information about what kind of companies you're interested in and what positions you'd be willing to take. Once you've provided that information, just sit back and wait for the offers to start piling up.

Moreover, because the whole point is not tipping off your current employer that you're looking for new career opportunities, LinkedIn will hide your own company's recruiters and any headhunters affiliated with it.

Job hunters can take advantage of the Open Candidates service completely free of charge, but employers who want to find prospective candidates through this option will have to pay for LinkedIn's premium service.

"Open Candidates is a new feature that makes it easier to connect with your dream job by privately signaling to recruiters that you're open to new job opportunities," says LinkedIn. "You can specify the types of companies and roles you are most interested in and be easily found by the hundreds of thousands of recruiters who use LinkedIn to find great professional talent."

The new LinkedIn Open Candidates service is initially rolling out in the United States, the UK, Australia and Canada, both on mobile and on desktop. A wider global rollout will follow "soon," but LinkedIn offers no specific timeframe at this point.

Open Candidates is just the latest effort LinkedIn is making to enhance its services and offer better assistance to professionals. Just recently, LinkedIn rolled out a cleaner desktop interface, messaging bots and a new LinkedIn Learning service, which offers more than 9,000 courses.