Why your Resume and LinkedIn Profile should differ

At the core of your LinkedIn experience is your profile. As you complete it, you are prompted to include information for all of your educational background as well as companies and positions that you've held over the course of your career. Sounds pretty much like a résumé, right? Not so much.

LinkedIn is evolving and if you are a savvy job hunter, you will seize the opportunity to utilize its new features to your advantage.

When looking for a new job, you might be tempted to choose the "easy" way of simply cutting one section of a résumé after another and pasting them in turn into the corresponding spot on your profile. However, doing this demonstrates a failure to understand what social media is all about, and limits the information about yourself that you can convey. 

Both your résumé and LinkedIn profile speak about you, but they do so in at least seven different ways:

1. length
2. etiquette
3. wording
4. target basis and rounded view
5. updated information
6. picture
7. past, present and regular activity

Often, even if a recruiter or human resources professional has your résumé in hand, they will still check out your profile to learn more about you to determine if they would like to initiate a conversation with you.

More details about the differences are in this article.