ResumeGo: How LinkedIn affects job seekers' interview chances

With more than 500 million unique users, LinkedIn offers a wealth of benefits to job seekers looking to advance their careers and find new jobs.

ResumeGo conducted the experiment between October 9, 2018 and March 8, 2019, posting a total of 24,570 fictitious resumes on various job search sites such as Reality, ZipRecruiter and GlassDoor.

One-third of the resumes had no link to the applicant's LinkedIn profile, another one-third had a link to the applicant's "basic" LinkedIn profile, and the remaining one-third had a link to the applicant's "comprehensive" LinkedIn profile.

According to the survey results, job seekers whose resumes included a link to their LinkedIn profile received a response rate of 13.5%, which is 71% higher than the response rate of job seekers without a LinkedIn profile (7.9%).

On the other hand, having a bare-bones LinkedIn profile does not increase your job seeker response rate.

In fact, applicants who included a link to their LinkedIn profile received only a 7.2% response rate, slightly lower than the response rate for applicants who did not include a LinkedIn profile on their resume.

The findings show that as the job level increases, the gap in response rates between job seekers with comprehensive LinkedIn profiles and those with none at all narrows.

This suggests that employers may pay more attention to LinkedIn when evaluating job applicants for lower-level positions than for higher-level positions.

A simple LinkedIn profile includes a summary of less than 500 words, 5 or fewer links, no work experience listed, and a profile picture. A comprehensive LinkedIn profile includes a summary of more than 1,000 words, more than 300 connections, detailed work experience listed, and a professional profile picture.

Research shows that job seekers who take the time to build a comprehensive LinkedIn profile have an advantage over those who don’t. However, there’s no benefit to having a LinkedIn profile if employers don’t pay much attention to it. In this case, a job seeker’s chances of getting an interview may be slightly disadvantaged.

199IT.com Originally compiled from: ResumeGo. Please do not reprint without authorization