Maybe LinkedIn Profiles SHOULD be a Resume

A few months ago I wrote that a LinkedIn profile was not a substitute for a resume because in the past...it wasn't!
a-linked-in-profile-is-not-resume
People included parts of their career that were only relevant toward the current industry they were in, and often left out important details that could be of interest to a future employer. They also didn't take the time to complete their profile, or simply had an account that they never did anything with.

Since I wrote the article above, I'm not so sure that we as recruiters and client companies shouldn't accept a profile as a resume, at least to get the recruiting process started.
There are five reasons I've seen just in the last few weeks.

Popular opinion seems to be that people are MORE HONEST on their LinkedIn profiles because they are public and people can argue whether or not they actually did the job they claim. This makes some sense because we've all seen resumes that looked great, but wondered if the person really had all the skills and experience they claimed. With LinkedIn if someone makes a false claim, it is easier for their network to spot it and call them out on it.

A second reason is it eliminates the waiting time for getting a resume back from a candidate. Everyone claims to want the "passive job seeker," however most passive job seekers are working and haven't updated their resumes in years. Instead of waiting for them to get a resume back to you and running the risk of someone else stealing them or the candidate giving up on the process because it isn't a priority for them (it is for us because we want to place them or hire them), so they take their sweet time on getting it back to us.

Accepting LinkedIn profiles as resumes could also be a good option because it stops the candidate's objection of "why should I send you a resume, you found me and called me?"
We can immediately start asking the candidate questions about their experiences rather than wait a few days to receive a resume and then have to go through the exercise of hunting them down to talk again. Their LinkedIn profiles already have an abundance of information on them that we can ask about to start building credible rapport with them about our firm, company, or job opportunity.

The fourth reason is it gives your company the competitive edge of speed. It is now an employee marketplace. Good candidates are getting multiple offers and getting them faster then a few years or months ago. Eliminate the extra time wasted by waiting for a resume, application, and reference check, and use the candidate's LinkedIn Profile to get the process started faster. Contact the people that recommended them. Ask candidates questions about why people would endorse them for their skills. See who else in their networks they recommend so you can grow your talent/applicant pool.

A fifth reason is the consistency of formatting.
There are many ways of doing resumes correctly and even more ways of creating them incorrectly. Information is lost all over the paper it is written on and you often don't know where to look or even read what is there. With a LinkedIn profile you know where the information should be because the template is the same for everyone on LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn is already here and candidates use it all the time. Maybe we as recruiters and companies need to use it differently that we used to in order to take full advantage of it in this market.

Thanks for reading!
Ev
A Heck of a Nice Guy