With 130 million profiles on professional networking website LinkedIn, there’s great potential for you to increase your professional visibility among those in your industry and beyond. It would be almost silly not to consider the benefit of actively participating in LinkedIn’s social networking as well as maintaining an up-to-date resume. But despite the fact that social media networks are fast becoming a primary form of communication for millions of users, some people aren’t quite convinced that a social network for professionals is worth their time.
There’s evidence, however, that social networks are useful for the job market: more hiring managers are turning to social networks like LinkedIn to find and screen potential job candidates. And since many recruiters use LinkedIn, you should ensure that you know everything that they know about the online resource. LinkedIn can create visibility for prospective employees and employers. LinkedIn helps to link each industry in a small web-based community, and when you seek to become a part of that community, you may find your options broadening at the same time.
While your resume is a unique document that can make you stand out, LinkedIn is essential in today's job market. That means it’s important that your resume and your LinkedIn profile work together in your job search. There should be similarities between your LinkedIn profile and your resume, but the two should complement each other, and serve to give HR professionals a more complete picture of you as a potential employee.
LinkedIn vs. resume
Although your LinkedIn profile and resume should be somewhat similar, one of the fundamental differences between your LinkedIn presence and your resume should be the tone. Your resume should serve as a “just the facts” report of your work, skills and educational background. It should also provide a recruiter an organized copy of your quantifiable success and career history. Often, companies require that a cover letter accompany your resume when applying for jobs. A cover letter gives you a chance to stand apart from candidates with similar professional backgrounds. Similarly, LinkedIn combines the uses of a cover letter and resume. Using a LinkedIn profile can be a real asset during your job search.
But although your resume should be somewhat cut-and-dried, your LinkedIn profile should be more detailed and provide more information about you. LinkedIn allows you to expand on your skills, education and experience in a much friendlier and congenial tone than a formal resume. LinkedIn also encourages you to combine the two purposes of your profile and resume, giving hiring managers a good idea of your personality as well as what you can bring to the table in terms of your professional background.
Leveraging social media
The modern workforce has become increasingly more reliant on social networking. From high school to post-secondary learning, students and workers alike are integrating technology into their everyday lives. Since LinkedIn’s features include the opportunity to write recommendations of your peers, colleagues and managers, it creates a platform on which you can give a full presentation of professional objectives and your personality to your target industry. Don’t be afraid to add multimedia to your LinkedIn profile: slideshow presentations you’ve done for school or other jobs, video, and other media can show a side of you and your professional experience that hiring managers almost never see in a simple resume.
With the use of smartphones and tablets on the rise, particularly with the younger generation of job seekers, using social networking as an effective job search tool is critical to today's mobile culture. Keep that in mind while you craft your LinkedIn profile: while your profile should be designed to show more of your abilities and strengths, it should still strike a balance between detail and conciseness. Smartphones are becoming as user-friendly and as powerful as computers, but a profile that’s easy to read from a smartphone might make the difference between drawing readers in and readers skipping over a profile.
Don't ignore the power of LinkedIn
While it’s still vital for job seekers to make real life contacts and build professional relationships, it would be unwise to ignore the power that LinkedIn wields in the professional world. The best idea is to maintain both your real world contacts as well as cultivating an online presence.
Lindsey
linked is a great social media website I have my resume there, did you submit your resume
LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for all professions. This is where you can learn more about your own niche from your peers and competitors. Most professionals are more than willing to share their successes with those who have not yet met their potential.
The ability to create exposure for job seekers and your niche is extremely high. Personally I have found a few groups from my state that has been a great word of mouth.
There are features such as “Behance” that give you the ability to show your work. I would highly recommend not only for business owners, but more so people looking for work.
Thank you Lindsey for your posting. All the best to you and your endeavors.
Well social media is both useful and harmful. People looking for jobs can take help from linkedin, twitter and facebook for searching jobs. But companies also scan social media before hiring candidates. So what one considers fun or cool things might block his recruitment to a company.
I recently have made my personal profile on linkedin but i was really feeling the lackness of guidelines. i was confused whether i had enough info to attract others or its too much. thanks for the help 🙂
Yes Linkedin is the widely used professional network but people are not using properly. Because so many fake messages are about job information which really disappointment. If people can give exact messages the then it would have been so much useful. Thanks for sharing the information.
LinkedIn is the best option to connect with fellow minded people and it is way way better than the facebook apps like Branchout,from which I atleast get a daily invitation .
LinkedIn is the leading platform connecting CEOs with people who are capable of working, so it definitely has an important role to play in our resumes. Lately LinkedIn has started losing its value, but I am sure with addition of few more interesting features it will regain its value.
social media is sometimes useful but on the other hand,it becomes harmful too at some circumstances. People looking for jobs can take help from linkedin, twitter and facebook for searching jobs.
Thank for shearing this info Lindsey,
I think the main purpose of Linkedin is to connect professionals, just like Facebook connects friend. I also allows you to out as much detailed information about yourself as possible. Doing so on a cv is silly as it would take up 10 pages. I joined Linkedin abut 6 month ago and since then I made a number of great business connections some of whom became my clients.
LinkedIn is great if you’re looking for an employee or a job. As a blogger, however, I’ve not found it to be a useful tool for promoting my blogs. Thanks for the insights!
Thanks for the compliments and all the feedback guys! 🙂
This is good stuff. I liked how you broke down the differences of LinkedIn and your resume. I need to utilize LinkedIn more effectively, I often will leave it alone for months at a time when I should be developing it and making it better.
Thanks. I’m still trying to figure out how to use Linkedin to benefit my freelance business. I’ve had a linkedin account for years now and I don’t think I’m using it as a tool at all. I could really be missing out!
LinkedIn is a great tool to leverage whatever aspect you’re going for.
Very important, if your an experienced worker, to have your resumes ready on-demand for your qualifications.
Good article, Lindsey.
Nicely said Lindsey! LinkedIn is very professional and the best place to add your resume and skills. It’s great also because it provides you with quality connections across the world and you never know that one of them can make the difference in your business success! Thanks for sharing!
John
LinkedIn is a truly awesome network! I’ve found some great connections through there and have even developed some business. LinkedIn has a great niche in the sense that it’s made for business professionals to connect with other business professionals as well as, to find people who might be suitable for their business.
Thanks for the great article!
I have been underestimating the power of LinkedIn. I will be changing my profile REALLY soon.
Those are some good points.
When I was still writing resumes, for 100k+ job searchers I would normally also take care of the linkedin and other social media pages. As you can have the best resume ever, but it can all be for nothing if with one search of your name people see information about you in a less good way. And nowadays it’s not just the more high paid jobs but any job. HR departments will search your name. It’s already a good start if you make sure that no pictures of you in an inebriated state pop up.
Absolutely Lindsey,
LinkdIn getting more power of connecting real people’s and its helping job seekers to find their jobs as well. I am a web developer and I found lot of great people’s there to get a lot help and I certainly recommend other people to join the communities not only to get help but also to get lots of knowledge related to their industry as well.
LinkedIn can overcome resume. I have seen most of the CEO’s on LinkedIn. Both are mostly similar but one should not underestimate LinkedIn.
It helps connecting people world wide and provides a opportunity to speak to famous people all over the world. And amazing article, nicely explained each detail of LinedIn.
Linkedin profile includes all options for professional detail. It is good to create Linkedin profile to find job easily but don’t ignore resume, create resume and share it on various job portal sites because resume is as important as Linkedin profile.
LinkedIn is one of the best professional social network I ever used. It is not just a social network. The most of the people on LinkedIn are professionals on different fields. We can always learn a lot from these people. So I joined it and used it to get their opinion on my projects.
Thanks for the great tips! I really want to be active on LinkedIn…There’s so much potential and I’ve been missing out but not anymore.
I think a lot of employers are wising up to people maintaining LinkedIn profiles exclusively to put on their resumes . LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for professional networking, but it is important to remember that directing your potential employer to your highly sanitised LinkedIn profile is probably not going to stop them checking Facebook and seeing all those lovely pictures of you out on the town last Friday.
Linkedin is growing fast among all professional Social Networks and has become the prime choice of the requiters to select the employees for the company.
So for making our presence in this Pro Social Network we need to work on our online Resume/Identity so that we can stand out of the crowd. Showcasing your skills on Linkedin has become the must have thing in the online world today..
Your tips are really awesome, so thanks for giving us some extra knowledge..
Well written, Lindsey. I agree with you completely that it will be almost silly not to consider the benefit of actively participating in LinkedIn’s social networking as well as maintaining an up-to-date resume. The problem is that many people, even marketers still don’t use LinkedIn as much as they should. How sad.
Anyway, thanks for a well written post!
I’m not in LinkedIn yet! I do wonder if I’m missing out…it’s true it gives good opportunities and is a great way to connect with possible employers and employees!
Kenny, you should really give it a try!
Linkedin and resume can be helpful but at the same dangerous at an instance. Please consider many things before engaging in this. Try to experiment better ways that you can actually benefit from it.
A profile that is visible on smart phones as well as on the computer can present your professional introduction at wide range.It can be very helpful to get your desired goal.
I’ve been using Linkedin for about 2 years and haven’t really seen the benefit of it yet. Although, I suppose I could include more details about myself on my profile. My goal for 2012 is to utilize more social media and if that means digging deap and learning the ins and outs of networks like Linkedin… Then i’m on it!
Hi Lindsey!
Can never ignore the reach of LinkedIn-intelligent networking site for professionals, i must say! That’s the beauty of LinkedIn, it provides you endless source of professional profiles which definitely gives you the advantage of screening and finding the best of the best all over the globe. Easy for you someone hiring to reach potential candidates, and easy feedbacks. It’s really functional!
It’s good to have such a nice info about linked in. I heard about it but never use it…..
thanks for sharing it…….
Interesting article. Recruiting companies use Linkedin as one of it’s main resources. And HR of larger companies use it to recruit. If I can make one suggestion. If you do have a linkin profile make sure it matches your resume. That could cause some problems if an employer cross references them.
thanks
sean
I think that when LinkedIn first started up people where suspicious of it but I can now see why its a useful tool. I suppose it really is like having an online CV.
I didn’t realise that big companies were now using LinkedIn in order to hire people, that’s really interesting. Maybe I should get on it before I graduate to increase my chances!
I am new user of linkedin and I never try putting my resume.Thanks for the info, I will try to put my resume there and see what happen.
LinkedIn is actually one of the oldest social media platforms, even older than Facebook yet a lot of people don’t understand the value that it brings. I feel like after it went public, LinkedIn has become more legitimized and more businesses have turned to it for recruitment purposes and growing their connections and networks.
To be honest i have my profile on linkedin, but i didn’t know about technicalities before read your post. I am feeling that i was neglecting these points i should keep in mind when i am on linkedin.
Hi Lindsey!
LinkedIn is the best option to connect with fellow minded people and it is way way better than the facebook apps like Branchout,from which I atleast get a daily invitation .
Thanks.
Really LinkedIn is the best option to connect with friends, its a really best place than facebook.
Thanks.
There are thousands of high quality profile daily update on linkedin. I also join this network since one year. Your thought and idea is brilliant. You are right to highlight “the fundamental differences between Linkedin Profile vs Your Resume”. Nice posting Lindsey.
I’m on Linkedin, but it’s not really relevant unless you’re in an office job, is it? It’s not suited to “work-at home” types (or is it?)
Tom
I agree that the most foolish if not to consider the benefits. I will participate actively in the social network LinkedIn is to preserve the history of the problem is that as long as many marketers still do not use LinkedIn more as they should.
I find that LinkedIn is a really good way to discover what is ‘hot’ in each particularly industry area and to be ‘searched’ for by employers looking to fill posts. This is particularly the case in niche markets. Therefore taking time to complete your profile carefully makes real sense
Yes, you are absolutely right.
Today many professionals are connected to each using this big community platform.
Many job seekers are finding good job opportunities using Linkedin.
I think this will stay for years to come until another big daddy arrives.
Hi Lindsey, Well it looks as if most of your predicictions are coming true :). More employers are turning to LinkedIn rather than Monster or another job search website when looking for candidates. Aside, from LinkedIn, I also heard many employers even conduct Google searches on a person to see what information appears before making a hiring decision. A well optimised LinkedIn profile will appear in Google when a potential employer types an applicants name. However, information one rather employer not see may appear. My understanding is utilising your LinkedIn profile to point to external websites that display postive aspects of your life is one way to combat this. Do you use the ‘Contributor to’ feature of LinkedIn for such reasons or do you sugget such? Thank you for the tips on how to leverage your LinkedIn profile.
I appreciate all the compliments! Follow me on Twitter to see more of my work!! 🙂
Thanks so much!
I am using Linkedin from two year. Linkedin is the best place to connect with professional people.
Linkedin is the professional CV for everyone. Companies easily hire you by Linkedin but you want to hire then make your Linkedin CV very attractive and engaging. Linkedin profile contains lots of stuff like your education and experiences.