How to Set Your LinkedIn Location for Remote Jobs

Set your LinkedIn location to the country and city where you actually live, then set your job preferences (the Open to Work settings) to "Remote" as the workplace type, with the countries you can work for listed as locations. Do not set your location to "United States" or "London" to appear in more searches: recruiters filter by where you can legally work, the mismatch shows up at the first screening question, and for a remote role it answers the wrong question anyway. The right question is "can this person work our hours from where they are", and that is answered in your headline, not your location field.

Here are the steps on desktop, from LinkedIn's own help pages, what each setting does to recruiter searches, and the two lines to add so the location works for you instead of against you.

Key takeaways

• Profile location is country first (required) and city or postal code second. Set it to where you live.
• Open to Work lets you pick workplace types (remote, hybrid, on-site), job titles and locations. "Remote" plus the countries you want is the setting for remote roles.
• You can show Open to Work to all members (with the green frame) or to recruiters only. For an active job search the frame is not the problem; the vague headline is.
• LinkedIn removes Open to Work automatically if you stop replying to recruiter messages and do not confirm you are still looking.
• Put your time zone and overlap hours in the headline or the first line of About; the location field cannot carry them.

How do you change your location on LinkedIn?

The steps are from LinkedIn's help page on editing your profile location, which also notes that the country you choose changes the employment types you can pick in the Experience section:

1. Click the Me icon at the top of the LinkedIn homepage, then View profile.
2. Click the Edit (pencil) icon in your introduction section.
3. In the Edit intro window, scroll to Location.
4. Select your Country/Region. This field is required.
5. Depending on the country, add your City/District or Postal code. Add the city; a country alone reads as evasive to a recruiter.
6. Click Save.

On mobile the path is the same from your profile's edit icon. The location you set here is what appears under your name and what the "Locations" filter in recruiter search matches against.

How do you set remote preferences in Open to Work?

LinkedIn's help page on letting recruiters know you are Open to Work gives the path: Me, View profile, the Open to button, then Finding a new job. The form asks for the information the help page describes as the job types and preferred location, and in practice that means:

1. Job titles: the titles you want, as they appear in posts. "Executive Assistant", not "EA"; "Sales Development Representative" as well as "SDR". The positioning guide explains why the title has to match what the recruiter types.
2. Workplace types: tick Remote. Tick Hybrid or On-site only if you would take one.
3. Job locations: for remote, the countries or regions you can work for. If you can work for a US company from Portugal as a contractor, "United States" belongs here as a job location while your profile location stays Portugal. That pairing is what tells a recruiter "lives in Portugal, open to US-based remote roles".
4. Start date and employment types (full-time, contract, part-time): say contract as well as full-time if you are open to it, because many US-to-Europe roles are contracts.
5. Visibility: All LinkedIn members adds the #OpenToWork photo frame; Recruiters only shows it to people using LinkedIn Recruiter, and LinkedIn says it tries, without guarantee, to hide it from recruiters at your current company.
6. Click Save.

The help page adds one rule worth knowing: if you stop responding to recruiter InMails, LinkedIn emails you to confirm you are still looking, and removes the Open to Work status if you do not reply. Answer recruiter messages, even with a no.

Why does lying about your location backfire?

Because the location field is used for eligibility, not for interest. A recruiter searching for a role that must be filled in the US filters by US locations; a profile set to "New York" that turns out to be in Warsaw wastes the recruiter's first call and gets flagged. A recruiter searching for a role open to Europe filters by European countries, and a profile set to the US does not appear at all. Set the real location and let Open to Work carry the "I can work for US companies" signal through the job locations field.

What the location field cannot do is say which hours you can work. That belongs in the headline ("based in Warsaw, working US Eastern mornings") or in the first line of About, where the US hours conversion table gives you the numbers to state.

If you want to find roles where the location line is already visible, the Euro Remote Talent job board lists remote jobs open to people in Europe with the countries and the contract type in the post. If you want to check what a dollar rate is worth where you live before you set "United States" as a job location, the jobseeker calculator does the conversion.

Two lines that make your LinkedIn location work for remote jobs

Headline: "Senior Account Executive, B2B SaaS, EMEA | Based in Lisbon, available 13:00 to 21:00 WET (9:00 to 17:00 ET)"

First line of About: "I am based in Lisbon and work for US and UK companies as a contractor, keeping four hours of overlap with the US East Coast every day."

With those two lines, a recruiter who finds you through a European location filter knows you can serve a US team, and a recruiter who finds you through "United States" as a job location knows you are not pretending to be there. The LinkedIn message templates use the same line when you write first.

FAQ

Should I set my LinkedIn location to where I want to work or where I live?

Where you live. Use the job locations inside Open to Work for the countries you want to work for. Recruiters use the profile location to check eligibility and the Open to Work locations to check interest; swapping them puts you in the wrong searches and out of the right ones.

Does the #OpenToWork frame hurt my chances?

There is no evidence either way in LinkedIn's own help pages, and recruiters disagree. The practical answer: if you are actively looking and do not mind your current employer knowing, the frame costs nothing; if you need discretion, choose "Recruiters only". A vague headline hurts far more than a green frame.

Can I set more than one location on LinkedIn?

Your profile has one location. Open to Work accepts several job locations, including countries you do not live in, and that is where "United States" or "United Kingdom" goes if you want to work remotely for companies based there.

Why did my Open to Work setting disappear?

LinkedIn removes it if you stop replying to recruiter InMails and do not confirm, by email, that you are still looking. Reply to recruiter messages, even to decline, and the setting stays on.

The short version

Profile location: the country and city where you live. Open to Work: Remote as the workplace type, the countries you can work for as job locations, titles as recruiters type them, contract as well as full-time if you are open to it. Hours and time zone go in the headline and the first line of About, in the company's time zone. Then browse the remote jobs open to people in Europe, and if you want a headhunter to review the whole profile, join the waitlist for the Land a Great Remote Job accelerator program, a 2-week program with 4 live classes and 10 seats.