That LinkedIn link on your resume? No bueno.

There's a trend I've been seeing lately and I've got an opinion on it. People are adding a link to their LinkedIn profile on their resumes and I don't like it, 99% of the time. Do. Not. Like.

I think about the resume as real estate and space is at a premium. If you put something on there, there has to be a reason and you need to focus on what your audience wants and what best positions you - everything else is just taking up space. I guess LinkedIn is kind of the de facto online profile, so folks think it's logical to put a link along with contact info but it's rarely a good idea. Here's why:

1) Usually, the resume is a more detailed version of a person's background than LinkedIn. Unless there's additional biographical info on LinkedIn that isn't on the resume, what is the point? The one exception I could think of is if you have a white paper or something on your LinkedIn profile. But even then, it would make sense to just link to the document.

2) Resumes generally get scanned into databases and lose hyperlinks. Searching their internal resume databases is how many recruiters will come across your info. So if you hyperlinked text in your resume to your LinkedIn profile, it won't work in the scanned version and if you paste the full url (especially if you haven't customized your url), it just looks messy. Recruiters are experts at searching and they will have no problem finding you on LinkedIn if they have a burning question about the size of your network or what recommendations you solicited from people you work with (which are all viewed with a grain of salt anyway).

3) The biggest reason not to add your LinkedIn profile to your resume has to do with stickiness, a concept from web content development. When a website is sticky, it is so engaging that it keeps the user on the site. In general, that attention is thought to increase the likelihood of additional clicks and/or conversion - it makes good things happen for you. Essentially, it keeps the users attention on the site because once you send them off it, you lose control of the content that is being served up. Now if you think similarly about your resume; you want to recruiter or hiring manager to spend time reading your resume. Once you send them somewhere else (like LinkedIn), you are inviting competition for their attention. LinkedIn throws a whole bunch of distraction at them. The reader might come back to your resume or they might click on links they see under "Similar Profiles" or "People Also Viewed" or they may think "hmm, maybe it's a good time to do some searches on LinkedIn" or "I wonder what my ex-boyfriend is doing for work these days" or "who is looking at my profile?".

So I generally advocate for leaving the LinkedIn link off the resume, unless your job is writing LinkedIn profiles.