Create a PDF Resume from LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been around for a while, allowing its users to create a page to showcase their work experience, make connections with like-minded people and colleagues, and can be used as a landing page when you are actively looking for new work opportunities. But it’s not a resume — at least, in the traditional sense.

While many of those who are looking for new employees may jump onto LinkedIn to either see if a current connection is available or to notify all of their connections of an opportunity for work, there are far more employers who still like — and need — to see a resume in order for potential candidates to even contend for an opening.

This is where LinkedIn’s new Resume Builder comes in.

Getting Started

When you click on the Resume Builder link, you’re asked to sign in with your LinkedIn account credentials. If you don’t have a Linkedin account yet, you’re missing out. You can sign up for one at their website and begin to explore what it has to offer.

Once you’ve confirmed that you’d like to “link” the Resume Builder with your LinkedIn account, the service automatically builds a resume based on what you’ve put into your LinkedIn profile.

Building Your Resume

The next stage is where the real “meat” of the resume building process takes place.

As you can see, it creates the resume in its default “Clean” theme. There are many others to choose from (Classic, Executive, Business, etc.) that will give you the desired look of your resume. This is especially helpful if you are applying for jobs that you want to tailor your resume to. You may want to use one of the coloured variety for one type of job and the Exectuive style for another.

At this stage you can tweak your resume to your heart’s content. You may want to reorder the sections to best suit the type of work you’re seeking. You can also dive right into your LinkedIn profile from here to augment it. The changes will appear on your resume in whatever category or section you’ve made the changes in.

You’ll probably want to print your resume, which you can do directly from this area as well. You can generate a PDF which will either download directly to your computer for printing later or you can print it right away.

Privacy

It’s possible that you don’t want everyone seeing your resume, either for your own stance on privacy or that you simply don’t want your current boss finding it online while looking up your name on search engines). LinkedIn’s Resume builder offers privacy settings that let you decide who can see your resume online.

There are various parameters to work with, which limits people to no access, access only if they have the link to your resume (you will have a link for each of your resumes) or complete public access. There’s also sharing options visible here as well so you can send the link for your resume to the various services provided (Twitter, Facebook and — gasp — LinkedIn).

Previewing Your Resume

When you’re all done fine-tuning your resumes, you can view them just as others will — public or otherwise.

You’ll notice that anyone can easily access your LinkedIn profile directly from any of your resumes (which is great if you’ve got some connections that prospective employers have either worked with or are impressed with). There’s also an ability to print resumes from this page as well, which can be useful for those hiring who have adopted the web as a headhunting tool but aren’t quite comfortable with not having a paper copy at the ready.

The Verdict

LinkedIn’s new Resume Builder is a great addition to an awesome (and seemingly ever-expanding) service. They’ve added their own form of extensions as the service has increased its user base, and with the ability to create a PDF resume from everything you’ve entered into your profile they’ve taken another big step towards even more mainstream growth. Now instead of having to work with several tools to generate a professional image, you can make LinkedIn your professional hub on the web.

Give it a try. It’s a real time saver, is easy to use and makes LinkedIn more accessible — and appealing — than ever before.