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Recently I asked a colleague - someone I wanted to recommend for a consulting gig - to send me his CV.
His response was, “So you want something different than my LinkedIn profile?"
Interesting question.
Our LinkedIn profiles contain just about everything that we would put on a curriculum vitae.Right?
Well, no. Of course not. A CV is not a resume. A CV is a narrative our our intellectual contributions.
People outside of academia don’t share their CV’s, they share their resumes.
A resume should be short - no more than two pages. A CV, alternatively, should list one’s full contributions to the creation of knowledge. The more pages, the more knowledge you have created. Right?
The reality is that many of us pad our CV’s. We put way too much stuff in. Too many conference presentations. Too many notations of committees served. Stuff that we care about - but that probably nobody else does.
The beauty of a well-crafted LinkedIn profile - and here I’m imagining as I have no idea what a well-crafted LinkedIn profile really looks like - is simplicity.
A good LinkedIn profile has those attributes that truly distinguish you as a professional. This is a profile that should be kept up-to-date, noting your major responsibilities, accountabilities, and accomplishments.
Fluff and filler, I would think, would not look good on a LinkedIn profile. (There is something to this about the digital - as a CV that runs to many many printed pages is somehow impressive (when printed) - but that requires endless screen scrolling is just annoying and pretentious).
Is it the case that job applicants are pointing to their LinkedIn profiles rather than a traditional CV?
Are any brave (or foolish) souls in academia making this leap?
Is this shift occurring only outside of academia - and not within the norms and accepted practices of higher ed hiring?
Will parts of higher ed move away from traditional paper CV’s and towards LinkedIn profiles faster than others? For instance, is this LinkedIn practice acceptable with staff roles but not faculty positions?
What about alt-ac jobs - those that straddle some lines between staff and educator?
How many of us are creating our own professional sites that are not associated with our employer, and not dependent on LinkedIn? A few years ago - at the urging of my brother - I created joshmkim.com to host my online CV. This site has more information than my LinkedIn profile - but since hardly anyone ever visits the site - I’m not sure how much professional benefits it provides.
Do you think that Microsoft’s $26 billion dollar acquisition of LinkedIn will accelerate a trend to replace the CV with the LinkedIn profile? (If this trend really exists).
How much do you water and feed your LinkedIn profile?
What would you think if someone sent you a LinkedIn link - or the PDF that can be automatically created from a LinkedIn profile?
Are there two types of people in the world - those who like LinkedIn and those who can’t stand LinkedIn?
Does LinkedIn matter less for academia than the rest of the world? Or are there parts of academia - like non-faculty gigs - where LinkedIn is actually really important?
How do we find you on LinkedIn?
