After spending hours on your resume, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste the information over to your executive LinkedIn profile. While this makes sense on the surface, since LinkedIn provides the same type of information as your resume, it’s one of the worst things you can do.
Recruiters do diligent research on candidates and look at many different platforms to learn as much as they can about you. If they see your resume copied over to your LinkedIn profile, it shows your lack of creativity and potential disinterest in finding a new job. While there are some similarities between your resume and LinkedIn profile, there are many more differences between the two.
What to Include on Your Resume
The best resume writing service can help you pick out the biggest points and facts from your career up to this point and display them on your resume. This is the document where you need to be cut-and-dry by highlighting specific experiences and accomplishments. You shouldn’t have a lot of text next to each bullet point on your resume, because you need to remember a recruiter spends an average of about six seconds reading any given resume and doesn’t want to read a bunch of fluff.
What to Include on Your LinkedIn Profile
Your executive LinkedIn profile gives you the opportunity to tell the backstory on those short bullet points you have in your resume. You don’t have to tell your complete life story (and it’s recommended that you don’t), but you can give a little background to put your achievements into perspective.
When you’re working on your LinkedIn profile development, you also need to be more general instead of targeted. Your LinkedIn network is full of diversity, so you could be missing out on opportunities by being specific about your role and interests. This goes against how a resume is crafted, but it’s important to make the distinction.
Always Separate The Two When Job Searching
When you’re searching for an executive position, you never know if your resume or your executive LinkedIn profile will be viewed first by a recruiter. The two are similar only because they are tools to help you land a new job. The content may be similar, but it should be displayed very differently. Keeping the two separate and distinct will help your job searching efforts tremendously.
At Professional Resume Services, we work every day to help executives with LinkedIn profile development and resume writing. It’s difficult to wrap your mind around how different these two are, but we are here to guide you on the right path. Feel free to set up a time to talk if you have questions or need assistance with any aspect of your executive resume or LinkedIn profile.
By Erin Kennedy, MCD, CMRW, CPRW, BS/HR, a Certified Professional & Executive Resume Writer/Career Consultant, and the President of Professional Resume Services, Inc. She has achieved international recognition following nominations and wins of the prestigious T.O.R.I. (Toast of the Resume Industry) Award. Find Erin at http://exclusive-executive-resumes.com.