Should you post your resume on LinkedIn?

The question is often asked as what to do with your traditional  resume on LinkedIn.  Isn't LinkedIn basically your on-line resume anyway?  Or should you just use LinkedIn as an outline of your career, skills and experience and your traditional resume as a more detailed summary of your career and achievements?  And how do you manage this if you are currently employed and don't want to signal to your current employer that you are "on the market"?

Before I address these issues, it is relevant to highlight the recent case in the UK where an employee was supposedly forced out of his job for uploading his resume to LinkedIn.  There may be more to this case than what has been reported and I would argue that there may have been some political naivete on the part of the employee in actually uploading his resume to a public site such as LinkedIn, where one can be connected to colleagues at the current employer, as well as be visible to superiors.  Ticking the box "interested in career opportunities" is pretty much a default choice these days but combined with actually uploading the resume may not have been the smartest move.

That being said, should one load a resume up in the first place?  I have previously blogged on "how important is your resume?" with a view that it is not as important as one thinks - probably not as much as networking and your LinkedIn profile.

My view is that a resume should NOT be loaded up onto LinkedIn for 4 reasons:

1. LinkedIn can basically provide a cut down version of your skills and experience and it is where many employers and recruiters are going first - and then only scanning - and if they are interested, they will reach out to you.


2. Your resume with its detailed achievements often may contain somewhat confidential information about you and your previous employment experience that is better filed in recruiters' databases or employers HR files than in the public domain of LinkedIn.


3. A resume should be tailored and targeted towards an employer and/or role that you are seeking - and thus there may be many versions of your resume each with a slightly different emphasis.  Having a generic version on LinkedIn does not allow you to highlight these points of emphasis for the particular employer/role.


4. Lastly, you want to retain control as best as possible over your personal brand, who has your resume and where it has been sent.  The employment markets can be incredibly small for particular functions and having third parties shopping your resume around - and even worse - making a decision about you without meeting you is not desirable and is at risk of "diluting" your personal brand.

So, my view - keep your resume to yourself and develop a really good LinkedIn  profile, remembering to comply with your employers' codes of conduct/policies in this regard and ensuring not to disclose any corporate confidential information - and be politically smart about it all if you want to keep your current role!

PB

Copyright: Peter Black 2012