How To Convert Your LinkedIn Profile into a Fine Looking Resume

One of LinkedIn’s true hidden gems is the free resume building service launched last year, which I have just been testing out. At first I thought it would be very basic and not all that useful. I was wrong.

The resume builder was developed by LinkedIn labs, meaning it’s an experimental tool but still developed in-house by the LinkedIn team. We can safely say that there is a need for a resume builder function on LinkedIn and I assume this is the Beta testing of it before they integrate it fully on LinkedIn proper.

How does the resume creator work?

Very simple. First off make sure you are logged in to LinkedIn. Then click on to the LinkedIn resume tool and sign in with your LinkedIn passport. The next thing you know you’ll have an auto-generated resume which mirrors all the information on your LinkedIn profile. This obviously means that the better that’s been filled in, the better the resume.

How do you edit your resume?

There are eleven different templates that you can play around with to suit your industry, seniority and purpose of the resume. Just like with your LinkedIn profile, you can shuffle the sections of your resume around and even hide the ones you think are irrelevant to your new resume.

The one thing you cannot do in the resume builder tool is to change specific details like job titles, dates and so on – this is done on your regular LinkedIn profile and updated automagically to your resume.

Benefits of using the resume builder

As we all know it’s a bit tricky to keep your LinkedIn profile and resume completely synched. On top of that, it’s a slog to have to update stuff in two places. You can easily change the template, style and decide exactly what goes up on the resume as opposed to the LinkedIn profile.

You can choose to share the resume straight from the application or you can set it to private. Finally, you can download your new resume as a PDF and email or print.

Is this the kiss of death for resume writers?

I don’t think so, whilst the LinkedIn resume creator does churn out pretty good looking resumes it doesn’t customize them at all. A resume writer’s main role in my opinion is to write excellent copy and lay things out in a compelling fashion for your target audience. LinkedIn’s new tool does provide the average job seeker with a nice template resume but this has never been the be all and end all when there is any competition for a particular vacancy.

Final thought

LinkedIn know that their platform is the place to be for all things career and professional networking. By giving the world this free resume feature, they ensure that everyone that uses the resume builder will keep their LinkedIn profile up-to-date and perfectly crafted for success.

via How To Convert Your LinkedIn Profile into a Fine Looking Resume.

How To Convert Your LinkedIn Profile into a Fine Looking Resume

LinkedIn Retools For Mobile: Your Phone As 4-Way Job Line

LinkedIn is retooling the money-making engine of the company — sophisticated recruiting and job-advertising services — so that they will work in full on smartphones.

At LinkedIn’s annual customer conference in Las Vegas, Parker Barrile, a senior director of product, observed that 30% of LinkedIn’s job views now come from mobile users. The site’s overall mobile usage has grown rapidly in the past two years and shows no sign of slowing down. To stay aligned with users’ changing habits, Barrile said, the company has rebuilt four core products to work on iPhones and other mobile devices.

“LinkedIn gets mobile,” Barrile asserted. As proof, he told 3,000 attendees that the company is launching a full-feature version of Recruiter, its top-of-the-line candidate-searching tool, to run on mobile. Acknowledging how competitive the war for talent can become, Barille observed: “Sometimes a few hours makes a difference in closing or losing a candidate.” He added: “Now you can use Recruiter at Starbucks, on the couch, or at the craps table tonight.”

In a LinkedIn blog post, Barrile explained that the mobile version will let corporate users carry out traditional Recruiter tasks such as responding immediately to candidate messages sent through LinkedIn’s version of email (known as InMail.) It will also will let users view the full member profiles created by LinkedIn’s 238 million members — or collect hiring manager feedback on candidates.

LinkedIn also is widening ways of delivering job-related ads on mobile devices, moving in tandem with other social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Barrile drew attention to Work With Us, a LinkedIn feature that lets employers highlight job openings next to individual employees’ profiles. Those ads are designed to catch the eye of other LinkedIn members who are browsing profiles of their friends or business contacts — and who be interested in a new job at their contact’s place of employment. Work With Us has been available as desktop advertising for some time. It now will be offered as a mobile servide.

The two latest LinkedIn mobile services follow close on the heels of other smartphone expansions by the company. A third one cited by Barrile is employers’ ability to get top-priority job ads inserted into relevant users’ news feed (by paying extra.) A fourth: members’ ability to apply for jobs from their smartphones, submitting their LinkedIn profile as the equivalent of a traditional resume.

via LinkedIn Retools For Mobile: Your Phone As 4-Way Job Line – Forbes.

LinkedIn Retools For Mobile: Your Phone As 4-Way Job Line

No, really - you don"t need a resume objective

Writing a resume isn’t easy. Nobody ever said it was, that’s why there are HR and recruiter types such as myself out there in the world trying to give you some much needed guidance.

One of the most common questions I get from people sitting down to write their resume from scratch is this:

Do I put an objective on my resume?

My simple answer to this very important question is NO.

Let me explain why.

Some of you may remember back in the day when objectives were commonplace and not only completely accepted on a resume, but also expected. If you aren’t quite as old as I am (ahem) and were completely oblivious to this fact, that more than likely means you are a job seeker brand new to the work force. You probably never would have even known about Objectives at all until your parents or some equally caring and concerned “older generation” type insisted that you put one on your sparkling curriculum vitae. It’s quite confusing isn’t it?

So let’s take a moment to analyze exactly why I want everyone to back away from objectives, shall we?

 Today’s economy is different.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, oh persistent job seeker. It’s downright rough trying to land a job these days, what with all the hundreds and possibly thousands of people that are also out of work competing for the same positions you are.

That’s why we need to make sure your resume stands out from the crowd (in a good way).

Putting an objective on your resume will do more damage than good as it immediately does one of two things in the eyes of a recruiter such as myself… It either:

A) Makes us mad

or

B) Puts us to sleep

Making us want a nap is definitely the better of the two options, but if you want to make a great impression – avoid writing boring resume objectives. Right now what I bet you’re really wondering is:

 

How could an objective possibly make somebody mad?

That seems a little over the top, doesn’t it? Well, here’s how.

Due to the fact that there are more “fish in the pond” for recruiters to choose from, people are getting a bit more desperate, plain and simple. They somehow have to feed their families and pay the rent, and like pronto, right? I get that, but from what I’ve noticed, the latest trend seems to be job seekers applying for a lot of positions, some of which they wouldn’t normally bother with because they aren’t getting any responses from potential employers on the ones they want.

So in their haste applying to a whole bunch of different jobs all at once, they forget the fact that they’d listed an objective on their resume that doesn’t align with the actual job they are applying for. The existing objective was geared toward the real job they originally wanted. And believe me when I tell you, us Resume Reviewers, we notice stuff that a job seeker might consider a “minor detail” like an objective not matching the position we’re looking to fill

via No, really – you don’t need a resume objective.

No, really - you don"t need a resume objective