LinkedIn vs. Resume: What Hiring Managers Actually Look At
- Nikki Winston, CPA
- Jan 10
- 10 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
LinkedIn profiles and resumes serve two very different purposes, and hiring managers don't use them the same way. This career blog is unpacking the LinkedIn vs. resume debate as part of the #CareerConvos™️365 Day of Career Development. If you haven't already, I invite you to join thousands of corporate employees who are getting the career advice they need to navigate the dynamics, politics, and microaggressions at work.
As a hiring manager, I spend significantly more time reviewing a candidate’s LinkedIn profile than their resume. That often surprises people, especially professionals who put a great deal of effort into perfecting their resume while treating LinkedIn as secondary. In practice, LinkedIn tells me far more about who you are as a professional than a resume ever could.
LinkedIn vs Resume: How Hiring Managers Evaluate Candidates
A resume is a formal document. It tells me where you worked, when you worked there, your job titles, and a set of bullet points describing what you did. It includes your contact information, education, and certifications. It is a document you tailor, revise, and submit when it matters most.
I review resumes for structure, clarity, and attention to detail. Spelling errors, formatting issues, inconsistent fonts, and sloppy presentation all stand out immediately. Your resume tells me how carefully you communicate your experience when it counts.
Your LinkedIn profile serves a different function entirely.
Do Hiring Managers Look at LinkedIn Profiles Before Resumes?
Yes. In many cases, LinkedIn is the first place I go.
LinkedIn gives hiring managers a firsthand look at how you see yourself professionally. Most people write and maintain their own profiles, which means your headline, summary, experience descriptions, and activity reflect your perspective, not a recruiter’s rewrite or a polished document prepared for submission.
Your LinkedIn profile shows me who you think you are, how you frame your experience, and whether the rest of your profile supports the story you are telling in your headline and About section. That context often determines whether I move forward with an interview.
I had to hop on the mic and break this down because your LinkedIn profile can be the difference between me calling you for an interview and throwing your resume in the trash. Click below to listen to this episode of #CareerConvos™️with Nikki.
Why LinkedIn Has Become a Primary Screening Tool
LinkedIn extends beyond desk work. It shows how you engage professionally outside of your job description.
Through LinkedIn, I can see:
What conferences you attend
Certifications or degrees you earn
Topics you engage with
Professional organizations you belong to
Who you are connected to and how you show up in conversations
Your resume tells me what you do at your desk. LinkedIn tells me what you do in addition to that work.
What Hiring Managers Actually Look for on LinkedIn
LinkedIn vs Resume: When reviewing LinkedIn profiles, I am looking for personality, professional curiosity, and context. I want to understand who you are beyond bullet points.
Your education, career progression, and professional interests all shape the interview before it ever happens. I often reference LinkedIn profiles directly during interviews—asking about schools attended, conferences participated in, certifications earned, or career paths reflected in the profile.
LinkedIn becomes the dress rehearsal for the interview.
Why Your Resume and LinkedIn Profile Must Align
There is one non-negotiable connection between your resume and LinkedIn profile: consistency.
Your job titles, employers, and dates should align across both. Inconsistencies create unnecessary questions and distractions. Beyond that, the two documents do not need to mirror each other.
Your resume shows formal articulation. Your LinkedIn profile shows professional identity.
How Recruiters and Hiring Managers Use LinkedIn Differently
LinkedIn is also a networking and engagement platform. I personally block time on my calendar each week to review connection requests, engage with content, and maintain professional relationships.
I do not accept every connection request. Sales outreach and manufactured messages are easy to spot and often ignored. When I do accept a connection, I typically follow up with a personal message to understand how the relationship should develop.
The people you connect with matter. Your network should include individuals you admire, learn from, or aspire to work alongside. Networking does not need to feel transactional or forced to be effective.
Common Mistakes Professionals Make on LinkedIn
Many professionals wait to update LinkedIn until they are job searching or starting a new role. That approach misses the point.
LinkedIn works best when it is maintained consistently. It allows recruiters, hiring managers, and collaborators to find you even when you are not looking. In my own work, LinkedIn has consistently been one of the top ways people discover me—either through direct search or profile discovery.
You do not need a senior title or a large following to show up professionally on LinkedIn. You simply need to show up as yourself and communicate what you want people to understand about your work.
What This Means for Your Career Development
Updating your LinkedIn profile is not about chasing visibility or performing professionalism. It is about making your professional narrative clear, accurate, and searchable.
Optimizing your profile with relevant keywords, thoughtful descriptions, and authentic engagement helps the right people find you at the right time—even when you are not actively pursuing change.
Additional Guidance: The LinkedIn Refresh Checklist
For a more structured approach, I break this work down by section in the LinkedIn Refresh Checklist. It walks through how to update your headline, About section, experience, education, certifications, and volunteer.
This checklist is included in an upcoming #CareerConvos™ weekly career briefing. Each week, I focus on one concept at a time to keep the guidance practical and actionable. Progress happens through small, consistent steps.
Keep This In Mind...
LinkedIn is often the first impression people get of you professionally. It sets the tone for conversations, interviews, and opportunities long before resumes are exchanged.
Use it thoughtfully, keep it updated, and let it reflect who you are and how you work.
The #CareerConvos™️with Nikki Podcast Episode Transcript
And so we're talking about LinkedIn profiles and what it is, who it's for, what it says about you and as a hiring manager, I'm here to tell you I am absolutely looking at your LinkedIn profile and I'm spending more time on your LinkedIn profile than I am on your resume and here's why typically a resume is a formal document that tells me what companies you work for where you work for them when you work for them 3 to 5 bullet points if not more about what you did there. It gives me your name your email your phone number your education and the certifications and this is a document that you iterate that you send the recruiters that you send the hiring managers, all of that good stuff, right for me as a hiring manager, this is how I looked at LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is giving me your perspective of who you are as a professional because for the most part, most people are creating and updating and maintaining their own LinkedIn profiles so I get a firsthand look of who you think you are and hopefully the rest of your profile backs up your headline or your summary or all of these things, but this is my front row seat to see who you are and what you think about yourself now the one correlation I will make between LinkedIn and the resume is make sure that your jobs the dates make sure all of those things are consistent between your Linked and then your resume.
But other than that, I don't spend too much time looking at somebody's resume. What it tells me is how good you are about articulating your experience when it matters. It also tells me how you behave in terms of attention to detail. I've seen résumes that have spelling some multiple typos, grammar issues, bad formatting, multiple fonts when it wasn't intended to be multiple fonts and that's what I look at when I look at your resume when I look at your LinkedIn it's telling me the story of who you think you are and that's usually for me what determines whether or not I call somebody and invite them for an interview so when we talk about updating your LinkedIn profile, it goes beyond updating updating it for a job that you might have left or a new job you just got.
It's more about who are you? What do you want me to know about here? That is not articulated in your resume. You can get on LinkedIn and post pictures from a conference that you went to. You can notify your network about a certification or a degree that you just got you can post or like reshare engage with topics that are relevant and important to you so it gives me more about your resume is telling me what you're doing at your desk. LinkedIn is telling me what are you doing in addition to the desk work so when I look at it, I'm looking for personality. I'm looking for who are you connected to what type of professional organizations do you belong to because those are the things I'm interested in in as a person right these are the things that's going to form the context of our interview.
I've been in plenty situations where I've gone on somebody's LinkedIn prior to a job interview and when we get in the interview, I can start asking them things about the school they went to, a conference day attended all of those things. Their job, history and the progression, or lack of thereof so make sure that your LinkedIn is articulating the message that you wanted to articulate about who you are as a professional, what you do the value you bring the impact that you've created and what you're into as a professional another thing I'll say about LinkedIn is for me personally I block time on my calendar each week to go on LinkedIn and engage with people. I review invites. I don't automatically accept every LinkedIn invitation.
The spammers are getting more and more sophisticated number one the salespeople are getting more and more. I don't even know what to call them assertive and just because you see that I'm a CPA or just because you see that I have expertise in a certain area does not mean that I want to connect with you and hear about whatever product or service you're offering respectfully so I go through my lengedIn invitations and there's a way that I do it. I probably I go through and I scan first I prioritize accounting students CPA candidates anybody who works in accounting and finance those are the people that are connecting with me because they have a question they need help and guidance with something and of course, educators and things like that, but I scan it initially because I need to hit ignore on the post for people who are saying oh, I feel like we need to be connected. Oh, I see that you're a tax expert.
The ones that I know are manufactured I ignore those and each person that connects with me well for the most part each person who connects with me, I send them a personalized message. I don't just hit except I'll I hit accept and I'll send them a message to thank them for connecting with me and to start our our dialogue to see how I need to engage with this person going forward so in addition to updating your LinkedIn profile, make sure that the people that you're connected with are people that can be mutually beneficial. There could be something about this person that you admire. They might've wrote a newsletter that resonated with you. They might be working in the company that you aspire to work for and so you can find ways, this is me and my introvert itself.
You can find ways to cultivate your network and your connections on LinkedIn without it feeling like a forced transaction without it feeling like this is something I have to do so I can check the box. A lot of opportunities that I've gotten, whether it's writing speaking new jobs have come from being connected on LedIn and you know the numbers don't lie. You know day the matters there are situations where I've looked at my website analytics to see how people find me in the top two sources are that people either search for me online or they find me on LinkedIn and that is something LinkedIn has become a huge source of networking for me simply because I showed up on the platform as myself so you don't have to be a senior executive at some company to have a decent LinkedIn following you don't have to have some special expertise or you know some badge of honor to show up on the platform as yourself.
It's no different than you getting on Facebook or Instagram or threads or any other platform you show up as who you are and you convey the messages that you want people to take away from engaging with you you make it easy for recruiters to find you by optimizing your profile with those ATS friendly applicant tracking system is what ATS stands for. You make sure your profile is optimized for those things so that they can find you even when you're not looking so is that it's a bunch of other tips and guidance that I offer in the LinkedIn refresh checklist that you should receive if you haven't already you should be getting it in the next week or so in the next career briefing and I'm referring to the career comvos weekly career briefings if you're unfamiliar and you might be hearing this episode because you found it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and you might also be hearing this episode because it's part of the career convo series so each week I send out a career briefing with career guidance and advice and tips and different things to help you level up in your career and do it in the way that's actionable to you so I break these topics down in smaller conversations because I want you to be able to act on it.
I don't want you to get a bunch of advice from me. Nikki said this and Nikki did that in her career. It didn't work for her and this that and third and then you tried to implement it and you're overwhelmed from the implementation because it's too much to do at one time. I recognize we're busy. We have things going on at work at home so I wanna give you one or two things each week really one thing a week say take that one thing lean into that understand what that is put that in place put that in motion before you move on to the next thing. It really is the small steps of progress that helped to get you over the finish line with things and so take the guidance from here and also refer to the LinkedIn refresh checklist and it helps you to update your LinkedIn profile by section your headline, your summary, your about section, your jobs, your education, certifications, your volunteer experience.
Some people put that on their resume. Some of them don't so LinkedIn is really your dress rehearsal. It's the first impression that a lot the people get of you professionally right so I wanna make sure that you have what you need to update your LinkedIn profile and I would love to see your profile after you've made some edits to give you my thoughts on it would love to hear your thoughts on it and we will absolutely keep these conversations going so reach out if you have any questions email me Nikki@NikkWinstonCPA.com and we will make sure that you get to where you need to be and where you wanna go professionally so let's keep going. We'll talk again soon.
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