Trick or Tip! Align Your Profiles to Impress. Part One.

Recruiters try to get a full and well-rounded look at you. This means looking at all of your professional profiles and comparing them to your resume. LinkedIn, Handshake, and your resume should all be connected.

WHY? 

You don’t want to miss out on a job opportunity because the employer found inconsistencies between your resume, LinkedIn, and Handshake profiles. This could be something minor, such as not setting up a Handshake profile correctly, or something as major as having direct conflict between experiences mentioned on your LinkedIn and your resume. This may feel like a pain, but once you take the time to update your resume (arguably, the most crucial part of any job application), you can quickly take a look at your LinkedIn and Handshake profiles, to make sure you are mentioning the same experiences and activities, and more importantly, showing the same degree of professionalism.

Let’s talk LinkedIn!

 

Aligning LinkedIn:

  • Make sure that all of your work experience, as mentioned on Handshake and on your resume, is in your LinkedIn experience section. Additionally, make sure that the timelines make sense, and that the bullet points are not outdated (as in, make sure that if it is no longer a current position, you’re not using present-tense). 
  • Add extra sections, just as you would your resume. Have a publication? Add it. Have a club leadership position? Add it. 
  • If you would like, link or attach your *updated* resume to even more clearly identify the connection. If you have several tailored resumes (which is really smart and recommended), don’t do this.
  • Make sure that your information is reliable, consistent, and applicable to all of your different professional achievements. This means that when an experience becomes too old or irrelevant for your resume, it may make sense to take it off LinkedIn as well. This is NOT the case if you just have too many experiences to fit on a one-page resume, because LinkedIn profiles can, when used properly, hold much more information than a resume, in a classy and professional way.

 

General LinkedIn Tips:

  • If you think it’s worth mentioning, it probably is!
  • Make sure that your LinkedIn mentions most of the highlights of your resume.
  • Update your LinkedIn regularly. 
  • Make creative posts relating to your major or career, as they’re a good way to represent what you have been up to!
  • Here’s an article specifically for enhancing your LinkedIn!
By Alina Minkova
Alina Minkova Creative Blog Curator