Ask HN: Can I use Linkedin profile instead of resume for my job applications?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2085686

by dwaynemaxworh • 16 years ago

26 65 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I believe most things employers want to see is already on my Linkedin profile. Except stuff like relevant courses or GPA (I am a student obviously). Can I do this?

sz2• 16 years ago

Why not just make your own site? LinkedIn has a terrible user experience.

Obviously whether foregoing a paper resume is okay depends on the company.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

No; you need a resume document that can be forwarded through email.

You can argue about this, but the original poster asked a question, and this is the Real Response to that question. If a prospective employer asks for a resume, send them a resume.

AjJi4• 16 years ago

I'm not sure why is this a problem, a link can be forwarded through email too ... unless it needs to be accessed offline?

w1ntermute4• 16 years ago

> I'm not sure why is this a problem, a link can be forwarded through email too

HR isn't as progressive as you might think.

rianjs3• 16 years ago

HR is looking for reasons to disqualify you from consideration. Why give them any more reason to do so? It's silly.

JimmyL• 16 years ago

You can't upload a Linkedin URL into the 'resume' field of Taleo/whatever applicant management system your company is using and have it work properly.

If you're dealing with a small company, you could try it - but clicking a link and opening up Linkedin (vs. reading an attachment) is one more mental step the hiring folks have to take to get from your email to your resume, which could matter in a not-hot economy.

If you're dealing with a large company, its system probably needs a resume it can store in its management system and scan for keywords/indexing - in which case the HR folks would have to copy-paste your Linkedin profile in and fix it up, which they probably won't do. Plus, you're ignoring one of the first things they've asked you to do, which isn't a great start.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

Among many other reasons, many perfectly sane interview processes involve interviewers taking a paper copy of the resume into the room with them. LinkedIn doesn't print well at all.

I get that this is fun to bicker about, but have you considered also that LinkedIn might not be the best way for jobseekers to present themselves? Why would you want to shoehorn yourself into LinkedIn's format?

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

The "problem" is that you don't want the job badly enough to submit your resume in the format asked for. And that's only your problem, not theirs.

Businesses are set up to do things a certain way. Often exceptions are fine, equally often, they are not. Since you don't have visibility into exactly why they want it emailed, just follow instructions.

There are many positive ways you can distinguish yourself as a unique snowflake; this is not one of them.

talbina• 16 years ago

Or, you can forward the link through email.

slantyyz6• 16 years ago

It really depends on the employer. Big orgs that rely on "hrbots" and headhunting agencies might frown on this, but I would definitely consider a linked in profile to be as valid as a resume if someone were to send one to me. But note that I have never had to hire in a big stuffy organization, only in startups or smaller companies, so ymmv.

alain94040• 16 years ago

Not really. But do provide a link to your LinkedIn profile, it shows confidence on your part.

As a hiring manager, I need a piece of paper in my hand that I can look at, print and carry with me to your interview. Have you tried to print a LinkedIn profile yet?

So I'm afraid you'll have to keep generating a nice-looking PDF. The content may be 99% identical to what's on your LinkedIn page, that's fine. Understand that your job is to make my life as easy as possible, so I can focus on figuring out who you are.

PS: also, please never send Word documents, I hate opening Word documents, use PDF instead

slantyyz6• 16 years ago

Yes, Word docs suck.

I've found in practice, that a lot of large companies (and headhunters) that use HR software seem to have trouble with PDFs. In this day and age, it's mind boggling that their software would have trouble full-text indexing a PDF. Maybe they're just too cheap to pay for software upgrades.

PDFs are almost never an issue if you're emailing it directly to the hiring manager, but a PDF could be bad if you're emailing a catch-all mailbox like jobs@ or hr@.

damncabbage• 16 years ago

I've previously applied for a job via a recruiter, sent them a PDF, and found out in the interview room that the recruiter had taken a screenshot of my PDF, stuck their logo in their corner, saved it as a .jpg, and sent it on to the company in my stead.

Fortunately, the interviewer saw the humour and we had a good chuckle about it.

tzs2• 16 years ago

> PS: also, please never send Word documents, I hate opening Word documents, use PDF instead.

Such generalizations are poor advice. Send what the employer asks for. Some will ask for Word, and are likely to be as annoyed by a PDF as you are to be annoyed by Word.

arebop• 16 years ago

LinkedIn seems a bit spammy to me, with all the mediocre programmers I've ever encountered professionally wanting to link with me. So I don't use it, and if you use LinkedIn instead of a resume, then I will not be able to consider you for jobs at my company.

dkokelley• 16 years ago

Here is what I do (admittedly I'm not receiving job offers left and right, so use at your own risk): Employers who are interested in you will start doing their research after receiving your resume. If they aren't interested in you yet, it's unreasonable to ask them to visit your LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, or even your personal portfolio without giving them something first.

My resume lists my relevant qualifications, experience, and then educational background, and if a recruiter decides after seeing this to do further research, I've included links to more information about me (LI, FB, and my personal site). The reasoning here is to decrease any friction on the employer's end. Make things easy for them when they are initially screening you by providing them with a 1-page resume, and make things easy for them when they want to do more research by providing the information to them.

Don't be lazy about it (recruiters can smell laziness from miles away), but LinkedIn does provide a resume printout pdf of your work experience, recommendations, and education. I would not recommend submitting this, but you can use LinkedIn as I do as sort of a 'Master Resume'. From there, I can pull the work experiences and recommendations that an employer would like to see the most.

mgkimsal2• 16 years ago

Don't be lazy about it (recruiters can smell laziness from miles away)

Funny, but I can smell lazy recruiters a mile away too.

"I came across your resume today... blah blah blah ... send me your resume and we can get started."

WTF?

I've had contact with about 30 recruiters in 2010 - the vast majority were 1-off emails or 2 minute phone calls. 3 were non-lazy, in my view, and I got a short term contract from one of them. She was polite, courteous, seemed like she was actually doing some positive work for both parties - a pretty rare find.

Yes, this was a bit off-topic, but, really... they're not doing this for fun - they're getting paid. If they think you're truly lazy they probably won't deal with you. But you shouldn't have to jump through hoops and do their job for them either.

freiheit• 16 years ago

Personally, I appreciate the "I came across your resume, please send me your resume" thing from many recruiters.

If it's a job I'm interested in, I want to send them a current resume at the very least, and probably also highlight the most relevant experience.

Who knows how old, what version or how mangled the resume they saw was...

(However, many mean "I did a search on LinkedIn, and yours was one of a couple thousand profiles I decided to spam based on one or two keyword hits and being with 100 miles of the job site")

slantyyz6• 16 years ago

You don't have to smell a lazy recruiter. As your own evidence states, 90% of them you should run, run, run away from.

novel• 16 years ago

I believe that while LinkedIn is useful and having it won't hurt in any ways, having resume is also necessary.

I cannot say a receive lots of work requests, but the usual pattern for me is that HR people find me on LinkedIn somehow, contact directly and ask for a resume.

noarchy2• 16 years ago

I've been in the same situation. What I dislike about this is that my resume doesn't have much more information than what I've chosen to feature in my LinkedIn profile. I suspect that this is all about formalities, and that their recruiting and/or HR policies require a resume.

gcaprio• 16 years ago

So why not just export your linkedin profile as a PDF? There's a icon on the right side. Makes a well formatted PDF if you ask me.

AjJi4• 16 years ago

LinkedIn has a "export as PDF" link (see your profile, right column, the pdf icon), you may use that pdf as a printable version of your CV.

sz2• 16 years ago

On the other hand it's hideous and you would come off as incredibly lazy.

AjJi4• 16 years ago

I've never thought of it like this. Lately, when I'm asked for a CV, I provide my LinkedIn and StackOverflow profile and it does seem to work :)

jarek2• 16 years ago

I would say it depends on who you're applying to. If it's a three-person Ruby start-up, just give them links to your LinkedIn and github, sure.

In a larger organization, the chance of your application running into a "why is there a 'link-edin' address in this email? where's the resume? what am I supposed to print?" person somewhere along the process rises fast.

Optimally in-house recruiters would translate/explain the LinkedIn thing to people who wouldn't get it or wouldn't want to get it. Depends if you're comfortable taking that chance or even care for working at companies where someone hasn't heard of LinkedIn.

_b8r02• 16 years ago

For me, definitely not. I want to see what your writing style is like, which is why a summary is important. I need something I can print out and take to the interview.

If you're applying for a job then a CV is pretty much a requirement. You will come across as lazy/disinterested if you tell people everything they need is on linkedin.

Confusion• 16 years ago

A LinkedIn profile has plenty of fields that demonstrate what someones writing is like, including a summary.

slantyyz6• 16 years ago

These days I find that people get help (whether it's from a friend or copy/paste from somewhere else) that it's not a very good indicator of their writing or communication skills.

Even the cover letter isn't a good example, since many of them are cut and paste jobs.

I can't tell you how many people I've interviewed over the phone whose resumes were acceptably well written but couldn't put a sentence together when you talked to them.

_b8r02• 16 years ago

That's why as part of the interview we get people to write a short set of vulnerability findings from pen test output. It sorts out people who've got canned text from those who can actually write.

DougWebb• 16 years ago

No, you can't do that if you want to look professional.

I recommend that you read "Land the tech job you love", which is full of resume writing advice.

yarone• 16 years ago

You may be interested in "Resume Builder," a LinkedIn Labs product that generates your resume and has a number of templates. Rather good.

See: http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/

aaronblohowiak• 16 years ago

You can also hit the "pdf" button on your profile itself that will generate a nice-looking resume.

rianjs3• 16 years ago

Any extra steps you make the HR person jump through--HR filters resumes before they reach a hiring manager--is a strike against you. If there are 50-100 applicants for the position you're applying for, they won't even look at you, because they don't need to. There are dozens of other people who didn't make them jump through hoops to get an idea of who they are. (Your mom lied to you; you're not special and nobody cares about you until you give them a good reason to.)

brudgers• 16 years ago

In a hot job market, you can probably get away with using a linkedin profile in lieu of a resume because employers are looking for people to hire.

In a tight job market employers are looking for reasons to disqualify candidates, and using a linkedin profile rather than an actual resume is as good as an excuse as there is.

In addition, in the US providing a headshot of yourself with your resume will automatically disqualify you for consideration in many large organizations due to concerns over equal employment opportunity requirements (even though attaching a headshot to a CV is standard in other countries).

jhamburger• 16 years ago

Sending a resume will never disqualify you from a job. Not sending a resume will disqualify you from many jobs. Why try to puzzle out what an employer is looking from you when you can just cover all the bases?

wh-uws• 16 years ago

Best of both worlds

http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/

udfalkso• 16 years ago

Linkedin should really push this feature. Great way to keep them relevant.

petdance2• 16 years ago

Resume-building websites are worse than worthless because they perpetuate the absurd idea that resumes are all about formatting. They are not.

http://techworklove.com/2011/01/resume-building-websites-are...

rman666• 16 years ago

Advice: Make sure your resume and your LinkedIn profile are in sync. Nothing worse then having jobs, dates, or descriptions that are out of sync between the two. You'll be confused, and the recruiter will be confused.

Cafesolo• 16 years ago

It would be great if Jobspice (YC S09) had an option to import your personal information, work experience and education from your Linkedin profile.

http://www.jobspice.com/

imdane• 16 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion. Andrew actually wrote an .hresume parser a long time ago (http://github.com/amccollum/microtron/), but that feature never got finished because we were going after universities so heavily this last year. Good to know that our users want it. We might have to reintroduce that soon, now that LinkedIn has their own "LinkedIn to Resume" app.

bkudria• 16 years ago

LinkedIn has an experimental tool called Resume Builder that will create a resume from your profile (and keep it in sync.)

http://resume.linkedinlabs.com

notphilatall• 16 years ago

I'm currently hiring for a large organization and have received linkedin profiles (in lieu of traditional resumes) twice -- both times I was prompted to register a linked-in account in order to see the full details.

IMHO It's on-par with sending your resume in .docx -- finding a good candidate is hard, so I'll probably jump through the hoop, but you'll be mentally earmarked as "that guy who sent me the problematic resume."

Just do .txt / .pdf with the same info in both, and everyone will love you.

Edit: If you want to really stand out, provide an alias whose search results illustrate your domain knowledge and community participation. :)

wiseleo• 16 years ago

I generate my resume from LinkedIn. Among other things, that lets me show my track record on my phone while I am talking to a person I just met.

One thing that is interesting is endorsements on your LinkedIn profile. Mine is fully public. I have 13 references on it.

What makes LinkedIn references special is that if I recommended someone, and the relationship subsequently soured, I can revoke my recommendation for that person.

petdance2• 16 years ago

No, you cannot use your LinkedIn profile as a resume.

Your LinkedIn profile is not the best way to present yourself to the company. You want to customize your resume for each company to which you apply. Maybe when applying to one company, you emphasize the work you’ve done in Oracle, and to another it’s all about the Linux sysadmin, depending on what the company wants.

Creating a resume is hard work, and it's not something you do only once. It's not a matter of filling in the blanks. Please don't try to take the easy way out. (http://techworklove.com/2011/01/you-cant-take-the-easy-way-t...)

loumf• 16 years ago

No, but not because of formatting, etc. Right now, you need to figure out how your resume is going to not just be screened out. The best way to do that is to customize it for each job you apply to. Make it so it's obvious that you are qualified for the job to someone who might be giving it a 5 second cursory glance (because they are looking at 100 resumes). That means using the keywords from the ad, customizing a letter highlighting how you match the requirements of the ad, and formatting it to stress the specific experience that is the most relevant.

The Linked-in version (or anything it generates) can't do this effectively.

Ask HN: Can I use Linkedin profile instead of resume for my job applications?

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