Should I Have My LinkedIn Profile On My Resume - Walrath Recruiting, Inc.

Should I Have My LinkedIn Profile On My Resume - Walrath Recruiting, Inc. When LinkedIn launched back in 2003, nobody knew what it was. It took some time for it to become the 500 million user powerhouse it is today. It has become such a powerful resource, most professionals consider it integral to their job search. Having an up to date profile on LinkedIn is practically a requirement for a successful job search. This has probably led you to consider, should I include my LinkedIn profile on my resume? Today, were here to answer that question for you.   To answer this question, we have to approach it from the angle of a recruiter. Is this something that would actually be beneficial and improve your chances, or would it just take up valuable space? Thankfully, we have a statistic for reference- in Jobvites Recruiter National Report in 2016, they discovered that 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to check candidates. So if recruiters are already using it, should you still include it on your resume? Yes- this saves them an extra step, for something they were already going to do. However, before you go ahead and add it, there are a few steps you need to take, which well outline below. 1. Update Your Profile An incredibly out of date LinkedIn profile is going to hurt you instead of help you. If you are going to include a link to it on your resume, its crucial that it is up to date. Its in your best interest to always keep it up to date, whether or not you are looking for a job. Either way, go through and make sure all of your experience, volunteerism, education, etc. is current and represented. If you are going to suggest that a recruiter looking at your resume should click through to your LinkedIn, it should also be more fleshed out. Your resume should be succinct, whereas your LinkedIn profile should retain your entire career history. Once your profile is up to date, you can move on to the next step. 2. Keep it Professional Since LinkedIn is technically social media, many people approach the platform in the wrong way. Your profile picture should not be a selfie, and you shouldnt be posting photos of your kids. LinkedIn is a professional networking platform, so your profile photo should ideally be a professional headshot. In terms of what you should post, articles related to your industry and news both show you are up to speed on current happenings. Even a well developed LinkedIn profile can be taken down a peg by an unprofessional photo, or shared content. Keep it all professional. 3. Get A Custom URL The final step is using a custom URL on your profile. This is what shows up in the address bar when you are on your own page on LinkedIn. To accomplish this, navigate to your privacy settings on LinkedIn. From there, click where it says Edit your public profile. This will bring you to a snapshot of your public profile, along with some editing options. In the top right, you will see an option to Edit public profile URL. If you havent done this already, it will probably be a group of numbers and letters. Click on it, and customize it. The best option is to enter your name which will make the URL something like this: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe. If your name isnt available, you can also try using a middle intial, or putting your last name first. Whatever you wind up using, having it customized will look much more professional. Once youve completed these three steps, you are ready to add that link to your resume! The best place to put it is in the contact section, where you have your location, email, and phone number. Now that you have a customized url, it should also look much cleaner. We hope this helps you get more calls back in the future! Also, if youd like to check out our blog on seven common mistakes on LinkedIn, that can be found here.