Should You List Your LinkedIn or Twitter Address on Your Resume?
A question that comes up frequently as I work with my executive resume clients is whether or not it is advisable to include Twitter and LinkedIn addresses on a resume.
My answer to this question is that it depends on what kind of a LinkedIn or Twitter presence you maintain. If what you have on LinkedIn is what I would call “anemic”–thin on information about you with no strong business case for why anyone would want to contact you–I’d say no, at least not until you remedy that situation. Do you contribute as a subject matter expert to discussions and forums? Do you have more than a handful of connections? If you cannot answer yes to both of these questions, your LinkedIn profile is not going to add anything positive to the perception a recruiter or hiring manager is forming about you.
With regard to Twitter, some real caution is advisable here. If you use your Twitter account primarily or even substantially for personal, non-business related musings, I would not include the link. If you use it nearly exclusively to establish your personal “brand” and display your knowledge of matters relevant to your professional areas of expertise, then the answer would be an emphatic “yes.” Again as with LinkedIn, I would recommend building a substantial following before touting your Twitter participation–having a dozen or so followers is not likely to impress anyone with your acknowledged status in the Twittersphere as an expert in your field.
With the fact that an increasing majority of recruiters are using social media to research candidates, with particular attention to LinkedIn, it is becoming increasingly important for people who are serious about their careers to use these sites to support their candidacy. In a world where Googling candidates has become routine, leveraging social media to help ensure that positive information about you comes up in a Web search is the smart move. While you cannot control what a Google search will produce, proactively building a positive presence in cyberspace will improve your odds that the recruiter’s search will reinforce the picture of you that you have so carefully created in your resume and other self-marketing documents.
Article by, Laurie Smith and courtesy of CareerHub.com. The Career Hub blog connects job seekers with experts in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.
