Resume vs LinkedIn Effectiveness

Avoid Resume Stress, build LinkedIn profile with these steps and get tons of opportunities in your inbox, sharing through experience.

Resume and LinkedIn both have been vital in the job search, however I have experienced a big difference in the effectiveness of both the approaches. Today, I will cover the Resume problems and how LinkedIn can be helpful in you career journey.

Resume requires consistent effort to increase the opportunities whereas LinkedIn requires upfront investment which gradually goes down while increasing opportunities.

Resume

Are you someone who applies to job and does not get call, meaning you are not having a solid Resume? I call that a Resume Stress.

This article helps you in avoiding Resume Stress.

The cycle of iterating through multiple versions of Resume to make it good enough to be recognized is a very tedious process, I see lot of problems with this.

Problems:

• Tedious Process with lot of effort

• Showcasing work in one to two pages is challenging

• Different Resume for different roles

• Requiring form filling or/and account creation for job application

There are lot of services out there which can help in improving your Resume, but I will show a better and popular alternate where you will not have to rely 100% on Resume, thus avoiding the Resume Stress.

LinkedIn

In short, LinkedIn is a tool that helps you bypass the Resume Cycle as discussed above. Having a solid profile on LinkedIn helps, opportunities come to your inbox and Resume becomes just a formality.

Benefits:

• LinkedIn is an interesting place to learn from

• One time upfront investment can be helpful in the long run (see graph above)

• Detailed Profile which can help in getting more opportunities

• No need to worry of having a perfect Resume, even LinkedIn profile sometimes is enough

• Able to skip initial screening like HackerRank

• No more Resume Stress

💡Investing on LinkedIn Profile gives long term benefits.

My Experience

This approach is a proven one for me and many other fellow Engineers, I have been really happy with it so far.

Initially for my first job, I had to rely on Resume, applied to hundreds of companies but since then I started focusing on LinkedIn strategies.

These simple actions have proven a worthy investment of my initial time. With less effort you get more opportunities in your inbox overtime. Trust me I get tens of every now and then, and you will get it too once you start applying the actions consistently.

I keep a detailed LinkedIn Profile and derive a Resume from it when needed.

Actions

There are several important steps that needs to be taken care of, if you are following them consistently you will start to see the results sooner and then you would never actually need to apply to a job again directly by relying on your Resume, exceptions applied [more in next section].

Lets see these actions:

• Keep your profile upto date

• Leverage keywords (skills and tech)

• Connect with Recruiters and Hiring Managers

• Engage on LinkedIn through posting, sharing and commenting

• Leverage LinkedIn Premium

💡I wrote an article in 2017, after getting my first job in US, and those techniques have been very impactful, read the detailed version here: LinkedIn Strategies for Finding a Job

Resume is still useful

Resume would still be required to move further after getting opportunity from LinkedIn, however it becomes just a formality as mentioned before, even a LinkedIn generated Resume is enough, but yes you need one!

There are few exceptions when you still need the strict Resume only route. The LinkedIn might not be the best place if you are looking for:

• A very niche role

• A specific team or company

• Anything that you can’t wait for

LinkedIn process require patience for the right opportunity.

In conclusion, focus on having a strong LinkedIn Profile and build a concise version of it as Resume, and use it accordingly. Since you are here, check out Craft the perfect data engineer resume and LinkedIn by Zach Wilson.