Hiring Managers Are Looking at Your LinkedIn Profile More Than Your Resume

And so we're talking about LinkedIn profiles and what it is, who it's for, what it says about you and as a hiring manager, I'm here to tell you I am absolutely looking at your LinkedIn profile and I'm spending more time on your LinkedIn profile than I am on your resume and here's why typically a resume is a formal document that tells me what companies you work for where you work for them when you work for them 3 to 5 bullet points if not more about what you did there. It gives me your name your email your phone number your education and the certifications and this is a document that you iterate that you send the recruiters that you send the hiring managers, all of that good stuff, right for me as a hiring manager, this is how I looked at LinkedIn. LinkedIn is giving me your perspective of who you are as a professional because for the most part, most people are creating and updating and maintaining their own LinkedIn profiles so I get a firsthand look of who you think you are and hopefully the rest of your profile backs up your headline or your summary or all of these things, but this is my front row seat to see who you are and what you think about yourself now the one correlation I will make between LinkedIn and the resume is make sure that your jobs the dates make sure all of those things are consistent between your Linked and then your resume. But other than that, I don't spend too much time looking at somebody's resume. What it tells me is how good you are about articulating your experience when it matters. It also tells me how you behave in terms of attention to detail. I've seen résumes that have spelling some multiple typos, grammar issues, bad formatting, multiple fonts when it wasn't intended to be multiple fonts and that's what I look at when I look at your resume when I look at your LinkedIn it's telling me the story of who you think you are and that's usually for me what determines whether or not I call somebody and invite them for an interview so when we talk about updating your LinkedIn profile, it goes beyond updating updating it for a job that you might have landed or you just left. It's more about who are you? What do you want me to know about here? That is not articulated in your resume. You can get on LinkedIn and post pictures from a conference that you went to. You can notify your network about a certification or a degree that you just got you can post or like reshare engage with topics that are relevant and important to you so it gives me more about your resume is telling me what you're doing at your desk. LinkedIn is telling me what are you doing in addition to the desk work so when I look at it, I'm looking for personality. I'm looking for who are you connected to what type of professional organizations do you belong to because those are the things I'm interested in in as a person right these are the things that's going to form the context of our interview. I've been in plenty situations where I've gone on somebody's LinkedIn prior to a job interview and when we get in the interview, I can start asking them things about the school they went to, a conference day attended all of those things. Their job, history and the progression, or lack of thereof so make sure that your LinkedIn is articulating the message that you wanted to articulate about who you are as a professional, what you do the value you bring the impact that you've created and what you're into as a professional another thing I'll say about LinkedIn is for me personally I block time on my calendar each week to go on LinkedIn and engage with people. I review invites. I don't automatically accept every LinkedIn invitation. The spammers are getting more and more sophisticated number one the salespeople are getting more and more. I don't even know what to call them assertive and just because you see that I'm a CPA or just because you see that I have expertise in a certain area does not mean that I want to connect with you and hear about whatever product or service you're offering respectfully so I go through my lengedIn invitations and there's a way that I do it. I probably I go through and I scan first I prioritize accounting students CPA candidates anybody who works in accounting and finance those are the people that are connecting with me because they have a question they need help and guidance with something and of course, educators and things like that, but I scan it initially because I need to hit ignore on the post for people who are saying oh, I feel like we need to be connected. Oh, I see that you're a tax expert. The ones that I know are manufactured I ignore those and each person that connects with me well for the most part each person who connects with me, I send them a personalized message. I don't just hit except I'll I hit accept and I'll send them a message to thank them for connecting with me and to start our our dialogue to see how I need to engage with this person going forward so in addition to updating your LinkedIn profile, make sure that the people that you're connected with are people that can be mutually beneficial. There could be something about this person that you admire. They might've wrote a newsletter that resonated with you. They might be working in the company that you aspire to work for and so you can find ways, this is me and my introvert itself. You can find ways to cultivate your network and your connections on LinkedIn without it feeling like a forced transaction without it feeling like this is something I have to do so I can check the box. A lot of opportunities that I've gotten, whether it's writing speaking new jobs have come from being connected on LedIn and you know the numbers don't lie. You know day the matters there are situations where I've looked at my website analytics to see how people find me in the top two sources are that people either search for me online or they find me on LinkedIn and that is something LinkedIn has become a huge source of networking for me simply because I showed up on the platform as myself so you don't have to be a senior executive at some company to have a decent LinkedIn following you don't have to have some special expertise or you know some badge of honor to show up on the platform as yourself. It's no different than you getting on Facebook or Instagram or threads or any other platform you show up as who you are and you convey the messages that you want people to take away from engaging with you you make it easy for recruiters to find you by optimizing your profile with those ATS friendly applicant tracking system is what ATS stands for. You make sure your profile is optimized for those things so that they can find you even when you're not looking so is that it's a bunch of other tips and guidance that I offer in the LinkedIn refresh checklist that you should receive if you haven't already you should be getting it in the next week or so in the next career briefing and I'm referring to the career comvos weekly career briefings if you're unfamiliar and you might be hearing this episode because you found it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and you might also be hearing this episode because it's part of the career convo series so each week I send out a career briefing with career guidance and advice and tips and different things to help you level up in your career and do it in the way that's actionable to you so I break these topics down in smaller conversations because I want you to be able to act on it. I don't want you to get a bunch of advice from me. Nikki said this and Nikki did that in her career. It didn't work for her and this that and third and then you tried to implement it and you're overwhelmed from the implementation because it's too much to do at one time. I recognize we're busy. We have things going on at work at home so I wanna give you one or two things each week really one thing a week say take that one thing lean into that understand what that is put that in place put that in motion before you move on to the next thing. It really is the small steps of progress that helped to get you over the finish line with things and so take the guidance from here and also refer to the LinkedIn refresh checklist and it helps you to update your LinkedIn profile by section your headline, your summary, your about section, your jobs, your education, certifications, your volunteer experience. Some people put that on their resumeé. Some of them don't so LinkedIn is really your your dress rehearsal. It's the first impression that a lot the people get of you professionally right so I wanna make sure that you have what you need to update your LinkedIn profile and I would love to see your profile after you've made some edits to give you my thoughts on it would love to hear your thoughts on it and we will absolutely keep these conversations going so reach out if you have any questions email me Nikki@ Nick andc.com and we will make sure that you get to where you need to be and where you wanna go professionally so let's keep going. We'll talk again soon.