LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 740 million members. As a job seeker, LinkedIn can be an invaluable tool to connect with potential employers and share your background. When applying for jobs on LinkedIn, you often have the option to share your full profile with the job poster. But what exactly does this mean and should you do it?
Sharing Your Full Profile Provides More Context
On LinkedIn, you can choose to share your full profile or just your basic profile with a job poster. Your basic profile includes your name, headline, current position/company, education, photo, and summary. It does not include your full work experience, accomplishments, recommendations, groups, volunteer experience, certifications, projects, publications, courses, test scores, honors & awards, and other details.
By sharing your full profile, you allow the recruiter or hiring manager to see your complete background on LinkedIn. This gives them much more context about your career history, skills, interests, and capabilities. It enables them to go beyond just your resume and see a more well-rounded view of your professional profile.
Benefits of Sharing Full Profile
Here are some of the benefits of sharing your full LinkedIn profile with a job poster:
- Shows your full work history including company names, positions, responsibilities, and achievements.
- Displays all your skills, endorsements, recommendations, and accomplishments.
- Highlights volunteer work, causes, publications, projects, honors, certifications, and education.
- Gives a broader understanding of your interests and expertise.
- Shows your connections and how you’re networked.
- Enables recruiter to assess cultural fit and work style.
- Provides social proof of your capabilities and credibility.
By seeing your full profile, the job poster can get a much richer view beyond just your resume. This additional context can give them greater confidence in your abilities and potential fit for the role.
Drawbacks of Sharing Full Profile
However, there are also some potential drawbacks or risks to keep in mind with sharing your full LinkedIn profile:
- Exposes your full career history including jobs you may not want to highlight.
- Shows all social media activity which may contain unprofessional content.
- Displays your entire network which recruiter may mine for contacts.
- Reveals personal details, causes, opinions you may wish to keep private.
- Lets recruiter see any endorsements or recommendations that aren’t truly relevant.
- Provides more information that could lead to bias or misjudgment of fit.
While sharing more information can help your candidacy, oversharing or exposing irrelevant details can also work against you. The key is curating your profile to show your best professional self.
Tips for Sharing Full LinkedIn Profile
Here are some tips to follow when sharing your full LinkedIn profile with a job poster:
Update and Complete All Sections
Make sure your profile is up-to-date and all sections are filled out. This includes work experience, education, skills, accomplishments, recommendations, volunteering, courses, projects, publications, etc. The more complete your profile, the better understanding the job poster can get of your background.
Remove Unprofessional Content
Go through your profile and delete any inappropriate or unprofessional content. This includes links, media, comments that don’t represent you in the best possible light. You want to showcase your capabilities, not red flags.
Be Selective With Recommendations
Carefully review any recommendations on your profile. Remove any that aren’t relevant or are from dubious sources. Focus on quality over quantity for the best impact.
Customize Public Profile URL
Change your public profile URL to be your full name or a customized professional name. This presents your brand effectively vs. just a numeric URL.
Check Privacy Settings
Adjust your privacy settings if needed. You may want to limit visibility of your connections, company followers, or groups if they don’t add value.
Remove Obsolete Positions
Delete or minimize previous jobs and positions that are no longer relevant. Tailor your profile to communicate your most sellable and on-brand strengths.
Expand All Role Descriptions
Beef up the descriptions of each position to showcase your responsibilities, skills, and achievements. Use metrics, data, examples to demonstrate impact.
Showcase Volunteer Work
Highlighting volunteer work, causes, and nonprofit involvement can convey your values and participative nature. Just make sure it’s relevant.
Add Examples of Your Work
Include links, files, images, videos, or other media samples that demonstrate your abilities and accomplishments. Seeing your work can give the job poster greater insight.
When Not to Share Full Profile
Here are some scenarios where you may want to reconsider sharing your full LinkedIn profile:
- You’re active on LinkedIn with opinions, articles, or causes that could be polarizing.
- Your profile includes inappropriate or unprofessional content you can’t delete.
- You have large network connections you don’t want exposed.
- The role is at odds with parts of your background or interests.
- You don’t want your current company knowing you’re looking.
- You feel the information could lead to bias or misjudgment.
If any of these cases apply, you may be better off sharing just your Basic profile. You can then provide additional details directly to the recruiter or during interviews.
Customizing Share Settings
You can customize exactly what sections of your LinkedIn profile get shared with the job poster. When sharing your full profile, click the checkbox for “Select what your recipient can see”.
This will open a menu where you can toggle on/off visibility for:
- Photo and Cover Photo
- Background photo
- customize public profile URL
- Contact info
- Work experience
- Education
- Volunteer Experience
- Skills
- Recommendations
- Accomplishments
- Additional information (publications, courses, projects, certifications, honors & awards, test scores, languages, etc.)
With these settings, you can fine tune exactly which sections of your profile get shared. This allows you to find the right balance of providing enough information while still maintaining privacy over certain details.
Conclusion
Sharing your full LinkedIn profile with a job poster can provide much greater context about your professional capabilities versus just your resume alone. However, it also requires thoughtfulness to ensure you put your best foot forward. Follow these tips to optimize and selectively share your full profile when job seeking on LinkedIn.
The key is being strategic. Share enough to get the recruiter excited about calling you, but not so much that you introduce complexity or doubt into their decision process. With the right balance, your full LinkedIn profile can take your candidacy to the next level.
Example Quality Table on LinkedIn Profile Sharing
Level of Profile Sharing | Pros | Cons |
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Basic Profile |
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Full Profile |
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Customized Share |
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Key Takeaways
Sharing your full LinkedIn profile provides much more context about your background and capabilities versus just your resume. However, it also requires curating your profile to highlight your best professional strengths while minimizing irrelevant details or unprofessional content.
Customizing your share settings allows you to find the right balance for each application. The key is giving enough information to get the recruiter excited, while still maintaining privacy over certain connections, causes or details.
With a strategic approach, sharing your full LinkedIn profile can take your candidacy to the next level and provide the depth of background many job posters are looking for.