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

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

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

~~~
nailer
It could be a good basis to screen employers.

~~~
w1ntermute
A company's HR department (or just one HR employee) being shitty doesn't mean
the rest of the company must also be shitty.

~~~
nailer
I agree 100%. And I send resumes rather than LinkedIn profiles. I've worked in
corporates in great teams and HR have been, well, HR (an industry where people
generally end up after being unable to do whatever else they wanted to).

But perhaps you don't want to work in an organization where parts of the
organization are allowed to suck? Where hiring is considered important enough
for resumes to go straight to your manager? There's a not a lot of these
places, but they're often the ones with the top talent (and they're likely to
find your resume than you have to chase them).

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jhamburger
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
Best of both worlds

<http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/>

~~~
petdance
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...](http://techworklove.com/2011/01/resume-building-websites-are-worse-
than-worthless/)

------
rianjs
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.)

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alain94040
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

~~~
slantyyz
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
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.

------
brudgers
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).

------
dkokelley
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.

~~~
mgkimsal
_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
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")

~~~
mgkimsal
Every resume I've published in the past 5 years says "a current resume is
available at ...." with a link to my site which hasn't changed. Furthermore, I
have an extremely uncommon name - there's 2 of me in the world, and I'm the
only one who comes up when you google me. If people can't be that bothered to
follow directions or make an attempt to see if they even _have_ current info
on me, that's lazy.

OTOH, I have a notice to recruiters at the top of my resume page with specific
instructions. I've had recruiters call me and make note that they'd read the
information and had some questions about my availability. That happened twice
in 2010 - I gave them extra attention and went out of my way to try to help
them find a good fit for the position. Simple courtesy goes a long way.

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

------
jarek
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.

------
sz
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.

------
iuguy
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.

~~~
slantyyz
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.

~~~
iuguy
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.

------
petdance
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...](http://techworklove.com/2011/01/you-cant-take-the-easy-way-to-
writing-a-resume/))

------
loumf
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.

------
notphilatall
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
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.

------
gcaprio
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.

------
arebop
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.

------
novel
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.

~~~
noarchy
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.

------
rman666
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.

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Cafesolo
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
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.

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bkudria
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>

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AjJi
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.

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

~~~
AjJi
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 :)

------
DougWebb
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.

