Graduates, Do You Need A Professional Resume Or Just A LinkedIn Profile - CareerEnlightenment.com

An active job search tool: You can customize your resume to one specific job or even to each company you approach. You can have different resumes for different jobs you wish to pursue, and you can send such  carefully customized resumes  directly to the headhunters, corporate recruiters and hiring mangers you most want to talk to. LinkedIn is the premier site for making connections and becoming visible, both within your professional community and to corporate recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers.It’s where you can forge your professional identity and establish professional connections that can help you for many years to come, and it is very different from the intensely personal Facebook pages many people have. While it is acceptable for young adults to have a personal social media profile, it should be sanitized of any evidence of college-era indiscretions and should reflect your emerging grown-up self, and do nothing to detract from your professional image. What you share on  your LinkedIn profile needs to reflect exclusively your professional persona, the way you want to see yourself, and in turn be seen by your professional community.You can start building your profile by simply cutting and pasting your resume into the different sections of the LinkedIn template. If you need assistance to walk you through the process, a LinkedIn profile consultant could help. Social media profiles need to sound as if you are talking directly to the reader, so because as your resume is probably written in the third person, you’ll need to re-write it using a first person voice.Another tip to remember is that resumes tend to be very tightly focused documents, but with a social media profile you don’t have the same restrictions and can add more details about your professional capabilities. Looking back to when you wrote your resume, you may remember cutting information in order to streamline it. Some of the deathless prose that ended up on the cutting-room floor ca n be used here if it is relevant and adds to the story you wish to tell. You can also add more information about school, volunteer, community or church projects etc that might speak to your professional skills and credentials.For more advice on taking control of your professional destiny check out  Knock Em Dead Secrets Strategies For First-Time Job Seekers.