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Submitted by mpolino on
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Would it be appropriate to include the URL of your public linked in profile on your resume?

 

I'm updating my MT formatted resume as part of my quarterly update and wondered if it would be appropriate to add the link to my Linked In profile. My profile is up to date and all positive.

My name is pretty unique so I'm not worried about being confused with someone else but I could certainly see that happening to others. I also thought it might save a recruiter or hiring manager the hassle of doing a search if they knew right where to go.

Thoughts?

Mark Polino

jhack's picture

What value do you expect to gain by providing that URL?  Is there additional pertinent info on your profile?  Might some of your contacts be a better fit for the position than you would be?  

I suspect that a recruiter inclined to look at LinkedIn will figure out how to find your profile.   

John Hack

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Hey Mark,

Interesting question in these days of Twitter, Linked In, Facebook etc, thanks for raising it.

I'm inclined to agree with John. Yes, it might save a recruiter a second or so to find you, but against that, your profile is likely to be pretty generic and not targeted at this opportunity, as your resume will be.

I checked out your profile and I'm impressed that you've obviously invested time in it, but I also don't understand half of it (I'm not an accountant) and I can't help thinking that some of the stuff is likely to be irrelevant for any particular position. So, you can't stop recruiters finding you on these sites (and why would you want to - you've invested time in getting it right) but perhaps focus on making sure the resume you send highlights your Skills, Attributes, Traits and Characteristics as they apply to THIS role, something a generic profile can't do.

The gain seems tiny and the possible downside seems bigger, though I appreciate that if you've done the hard work, it's tempting to publicise it.

Regards

Matt Kirk

 

jhbchina's picture

Mark,

LinkedIN allows you to download your full view profile in a PDF format. They get to be quite long. You could save the contact the effort of having to go to LinkedIN by send them the PDF.

This would be a great polling question for this site. B-)

JHBChina

robertg34's picture

My experience has been very positive using linked in along with the resume (landed my current position in large part to this).  Make sure the resume and linked in profile are consistent and ask your network for letters of recommendation.  Recommendations and allowing potential employers to see your network are two very powerful tools in helping you get hired.  They add another level of legitmacy to who you are and what you stand for. 

BJ_Marshall's picture
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On the Resume Review Service page, Manager Tools states they check to see that, if you include your website address, it is relevant to the role you're carrying out, and they check for the impression it leaves. "For the majority of managers, we do not recommend including a website address."

Your LinkedIn profile is most likely not specifically relevant to the role you're carrying out, but rather it is generally relevant to your work history and other information.

- BJ

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 I wouldn't include my LinkedIN profile URL with an application for a specific job, for the reasons others have given. 

I probably would include it in the information I was supplying to a recruitment consultant or outplacement consultant.  That's a different situation.  You're not applying for a specific job.  You've probably given them a range of jobs you'd consider so the targetted 'check box' approach of an application doesn't apply.

 Stephen

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<quote>"For the majority of managers, we do not recommend including a website address."</quote>

This recommendation does seem to imply a different kind of website (e.g., www.JazzmanFamilyPage.com).  LinkedIN could be described as relevant to the role you're carrying out because it describes your qualifications for that role.  Just another point of view...

It would be interesting to hear from some recruiters on this (hint, hint, cough Wendii...Mark).  There was a question I saw posted on the LinkedIN answered by some of my recruiting contacts about this.  The answer was mixed, yet skewed toward including it.

-Jazz

scott_kelley's picture

Hi Mark and members--

I also considered a link to my LinkedIn profile but only to highlight Recommendations I have received. I would be interested to know if others think LinkedIn Recommendations are of value to be hyperlinked on a resume...

And while I'm adding more questions than answers, are the rules different when adding a hyperlink to a word on an electronic resume (as the link above) versus posting the whole ugly URL in a resume that's meant to be printed?

Thanks,

--Scott

 

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 Scott,

there's been some discussion about the value of LinkedIn recommendations in the LinkedIn Etiquette thread.

As for putting links vs URLs in you CV/Resume.  I'd go for a general 'No.' but mitigate it with 'Unless you have a good reason to.'  It's an 'Obedienece of fools and guidance of the wise' situation.  I personally wouldn't recommend putting URLs in your CV/Resume but then I've done it in one of mine so I'd be hypocritical if I tried to say it was a hard and fast rule.  That said, I did consider the situation for some time and concluded the advantages oputweighed any disadvantages.  This is the CV on my personal website, not one I would send in for a job I was applying for.  It is the antithesis of one I would send in for a job as it's generalist and long (4-5 pages when printed depending on the printer and paper used).  It's not designed to be printed, it's designed to be viewed as a web page.  It contains a number of links, mostly to information about the employers I worked for.  It only contains one URL, that appears as a URL when reading it.  that is right at the bottom and is the URL of the page ont he web with a line reading "The latest version of this CV can be found at:"  That way if someone does print it and later want to check back for updates the URL is there.

Stephen

 

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wendii's picture
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For a number of reasons -

Resumes in big companies are still generally printed to be read - rendering the link useless.

If the manager is reading your resume on screen, then why would you encourage him to leave information you can control to go to something you can't. You have no way of knowing if LinkedIn have changed their format overnight to something hideous, moved all your information or allowed the site to go down. A hiring manager who is not technically savvy may take any of these things to be your fault.

LinkedIn is a useful tool, and has it's place. But not on your resume.

The recommendation about websites IS about personal websites, which rarely give the impression that managers hope they do and rarely add significant value.

Wendii

scott_kelley's picture

Thanks Stephen and Wendii.  And thanks Mark for the original post.  Good question!

rgbiv99's picture

Speaking of resumes and links, what are people's recommendations on putting the company website on the resume? Maybe after the sentences description of what you do? My company is small so employers would not automatically know what we do. Also, there is another company of the same name that comes up first in the Google search and has nothing to do with my industry.

Thanks,

Kate

jhack's picture

Kate,

If it would avoid confusion, putting the company's URL on the resume would be helpful to me as a hiring manager (I check the websites of companies on resumes if they aren't known to me). 

John Hack

thaGUma's picture

Having 120 CV's to review a URL gave an escape. The online application regularly stated 'see my webpage'. Clicked the link and the security settings prevented me from accessing what could have been A. Einstein's CV. Result - failed to meet base criteria = bin.

Make sure what you present will be seen. Onlne applications are the Devil's instrument. You MUST type out your CV and hope that someone picks up the fact you are a contender. SOOooooo many CV's in the bin because I have an excuse not to look at them in detail.

The classic was a repetitive 'see my attached CV'. Not attached therfore rejected. Hope it wasn't Prof Dawkins

Chris

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 Thaguma said: The classic was a repetitive 'see my attached CV'. Not attached therfore rejected.

True story, a while back I was asked to review a bunch of applications for temps who would be covering my job whilst I was off working on a project (the nature of my work at the time was that the only person in the department who knew what and how I did my job was me (dangerous I know but they wouldn't hire another person or give anyone time to learn, despite my raising it a number of times,hence the need to hire a temp), they just knew that when I did it things worked and to never agree a period of leave longer than 1 week).  Basically I was doing the first cut based on whether they had the technical experience necessary to do the job, there would be a later cut based on whether they had the behaviours. 

Many of the applications including references to attached CVs, but no attached CV.  Closer inspection of the forms revealed either staple holes or indentations from a paperclip on many of them, indicating that something (maybe a CV) had been attached.  After some investigation we discovered that SOP in HR (to whom all applications were sent for logging and for the equalities monitoring part of the form to be removed and entered into the equalities monitoring system) was that only the forms were sent on to the hiring managers, any letters, CVS or other supporting documentation was removed and destroyed.  The rationale was that such documentation may contain information about the applicants age, ethnicity, gender or sexuality (the application form itself was designed to avoid any such references, although it wouldn't be to hard to guess some of that information from the information that was there) so to avoid any risk of accusation of a selection being made on that basis the extra documentation was removed.  We couldn't contact applicants directly (all comms had to go through HR, in theory had I personally known one of the aplicants outside of work i would have been barred from speaking to them until the recruitment process had been completed) and HR wouldn't so we had to go with just the information we had in the forms.

The moral of that is, don't rely on any attachments being read because they may be removed (by accident or design) before the hiring manager sees them.

 Stephen

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wendii's picture
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We don't generally recommend descriptions of the company on your resume - at least not in their own section. It wastes space which could better be used for describing responsibilities and accomplishments. However, you can include some description in the responsibilities. For example: Responsible for implementation project management for international corporate clients.

Most times, especially if your interviewing locally, recruiters will know the other companies who have people with the same skills. If not, where you worked is not what gets you invited to interview: what you achieved is. Therefore, it's better to give up company information to include more accomplishments.

Wendii