Seeking advice regarding what to do when your resume is stronger than your LinkedIn account?

Anonymous

September 29,2022 at 7:34PM UTC

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Seeking advice regarding what to do when your resume is stronger than your LinkedIn account?

To put in context, I have a lot of international and entertainment experience. There are a lot of jobs that I took on concurrently when working in larger cities. Some locations required second jobs to pay the bills and companies / recruiters are interested in those positions due to the connections I've created.

On my resume, I've grouped some of the jobs together as recruiters wouldn't know the small boutique and international companies and that's why I feel my resume is stronger than my LinkedIn profile. It tells a more succinct story rather than listing all my past positions. I can't remove older roles as the positions as that limits the amount of years I have in my current industry.

To try to combat this issue, I spend time on the company's websites sending in tailored resumes and cover letters only to find them visiting my LinkedIn account. I receive a notification on LinkedIn that x has viewed my profile and sadly my first thought is negative.

In terms of account activity and connections I'm an active poster and have more than 1K connections. While adding content, media and highlights on my LinkedIn profile, I feel it's still lacking and I'm not sure what else to do. I'd appreciate your advice!

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AnonymousSeptember 29,2022 at 8:08PM UTC
It would help if you tell us what specific type of job and industry you are focused on pursuing.
sometimes applying for anywhere and everywhere can be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
-Elusive Companies: If the industry and type of job you are pursuing are for elusive companies, those are the types you are better off going directly to the company site to apply to rather than waiting for their recruiters to reach you
-Genuine Networking: It is great that you have 1000+contacts but are you leveraging those contacts in a way to steer you towards a job opportunity of interest. For example, if there are 10-15 individuals that work at 7-8 companies of interest, look at how they format their resume (if they add it to linked in) Try to mirror the formatting bc in many cases how they have it formatted and they key elements they hit on contributed to them getting an interview. Try building a genuine rapport with 15-20 contacts to the extent where you show a level of interest in what they do so that when a job is about to post they end up letting you know before it even drops.
-Joining and actively participating in professional Linked in Groups: Don't just join them. Attend the conferences (well the low cost/free ones/virtual ones) if you can. Some mentors purposely join groups so they can give back and mentor. So sometimes establishing a genuine rapport with 3-5 contacts in linked in professional group might be enough to establish a genuine mentor contact that can get your foot in the door of where you want to be.
-Don't lean on linked in for recruiters to find you. Aggressively apply to 20-50 weekly. Part of this is a numbers game. It is typical for some people to apply to 20 quality jobs weekly to where it takes 6+months to land a job.
-Ensure your resume and cover letter touches on all the critical key works from the job announcement. Not doing so and having plenty of examples to justify could cause and automatic rejection. And sometimes it not necessarily a person. Depending on the company software can be used to weed out packages that have low scoring on simply the key words used. So sometimes even that could be the sole barrier between you and a job you know you deserve.
Not sure if this helps. But hang tough and good luck!
AnonymousSeptember 29,2022 at 8:36PM UTC
Thank you, Anonymous. I'm seeking positions in branding, marketing and / or partnerships. My background lends itself to those fields.
I'm making new connections and utilizing existing connections on LinkedIn but I'm worried more about my job history than profile.
With the way LinkedIn is categorized, it lists every job. I have grouped promotions under the same company but positions that I want to highlight are older than the chronological listing and the reader needs to expand the collapsed list in order to get to the positions I want to highlight.
Due to the pandemic, my recent positions are managerial where most of my former roles are director or higher roles. That's why I apply on company sites instead of on LinkedIn. My heart sinks when they visit my LinkedIn profile instead of focusing on my resume that better showcases my background.
I appreciate your feedback and I'll take your suggestions into account while job searching. Have a good night!
AnonymousSeptember 29,2022 at 9:58PM UTC
1) If not done so already try highlighting your most important/relevant work in the "summary field" of linked in.
2) Job history: There is no hard rule that says you have to do a 1 for 1 listing of every job. You can consolidate here too without removing pertinent information. For example, if you had 10 jobs in 20 yrs, instead of having 10 job entries, reduce it down to 5 job entries, but in the job header where you put the company name list the entire time span for jobs 1&2 as an example and then put the name of both or multiple job companies in the header. And then in the main body, itemize out each company and highlight your duties and accomplishments. If you have too much detail, truncate where practical. Even if you had 10 job entries from 10 companies, you an still be concise with the details to only highlight the most important relevant content. Or you can do a combination of listing 1 for 1 jobs for the most important, and combine on some of the companies you have worked for that maybe you spent less time and does not rise to the same level of focus of what you are looking for. Not sure if this helps, but good luck!
AnonymousSeptember 29,2022 at 10:42PM UTC
This is very helpful, thank you! This will create more fluidity in my profile and I'll feel it's stronger because of that action. I appreciate your help!