How to Top the Candidate Market with a Professional Resume and LinkedIn Profile

You’re a successful medical professional seeking a change of pace in your career. Maybe you’d like to transition to a different field or move to another organization that better suits your particular skill set. Whatever your goals are, this article will provide some basic advice on how to create a resume and corresponding LinkedIn profile that demonstrate your unique fitness for a given role — even if you don’t meet every single job requirement.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss how you can highlight the skills you’ve acquired throughout your career, and how to showcase those skills on your resume and LinkedIn profile in order to attract potential employers. If you need more technical support, you can walk through the steps of posting and updating your online information through best practices detailed in How to Add a Resume to LinkedIn.

By following these strategies, you’ll ensure that you stand out from other candidates.

How Do I Create a Compelling Resume?
While LinkedIn does allow you to share important professional information, adding a resume to your LinkedIn profile provides a more detailed history of your skills and achievements. Think of your resume as your own career success story. The first section—the summary—serves as your written elevator pitch and can also provide the foundation for the “About” section in your LinkedIn profile.

In the resume summary, you’ll need to write a compelling but brief overview of your career history and skill sets, and explain how those skill sets have prepared you for this new role. You may be tempted to cover your bases by detailing all of your work experience and applicable skills. However, prospective employers prefer to see more focused and detailed information about you that is relevant to the position they have available. For more tips on crafting an executive summary, review this article from Indeed

In addition to cultivating a resume that is concise and pertinent to your desired position, it is important to show evidence of your actual skills. For example, support your leadership abilities with specific details about situations in which you have served in a managerial role. Employers need to see that you are not just padding your resume with buzzwords.

As you prepare your resume for addition to LinkedIn, it is important to read it through the lens of a future employer. Consider the questions that they will ask themselves as they assess your qualifications. Anticipate the employer’s priorities by reading through descriptions of your desired job and reflecting on previous interview questions that you have encountered within the field.

What is an ATS Scan and How Do I Ensure My Resume Will Pass?

To optimize the impact of your resume (and LinkedIn profile), it’s important to ensure that your resume will pass Applicant Tracking System (ATS) requirements. ATS software is used by many employers to scan and filter resumes before a human reader from the company receives them. The ATS scanner is designed to weed out resumes that don’t demonstrate the appropriate qualifications for the job. There are several ways to ensure that your resume will be approved by the ATS scanner. Appropriate formatting and file types are essential. A .docx file is more easily read by the scanner and should be your default version, though a PDF is also acceptable and should be used if this is the version specifically requested in the posting. Use basic formatting and a chronological layout. According to Forbes, up to 75% of resumes are rejected by ATS because they can’t be properly “read”.

Additionally, the use of keywords is essential. Employers use ATS to identify candidates with specific skills, and you want to show hiring professionals that you possess attributes that are uniquely suited to the role you’re applying for. To that end, it’s vital that you thoroughly review job descriptions for major skills or credentials that recruiters are seeking and integrate these phrases into your resume. Not only will these keywords attract employers’ attention, but they’ll also ensure that your resume will clear applicant tracking system (ATS) software.

Be sure to list responsibilities and accomplishments that demonstrate your versatility, skill, and work ethic. Whenever possible, include specific figures to make those achievements concrete. Review the paragraphs for any repetitions or grammatical mistakes, and cut as needed.

How Do I Develop a LinkedIn Profile That Gets Found?

The first thing users will likely examine when visiting your LinkedIn profile will be your headline. That’s because it provides a concise summation of your talents and professional background. To write an effective headline, take the “elevator pitch” you developed for your resume and condense it into a few key phrases based on the keywords you identified through research and your resume writing. For example, a strategic headline might read “Pharmaceutical Executive | Global Trials | Partnership Management.”

The next most prominent area of your profile is the “About” section. This should be relatively brief (2,400 characters or below is ideal) and follow a standard format. In the first paragraph, revisit the summary developed in your resume and list its major points in one or two sentences, e.g. “I’ve managed a wide range of clinical trials, created efficient standard operating procedures, and directed high-performing global teams.”

For the second paragraph, focus on your current or most recent role, describing the responsibilities it entails (or entailed) and what you’ve accomplished during your tenure. Then, list 3–4 bullet points highlighting some of your most significant achievements. The third paragraph, below the bullets, should reiterate the key skills listed in the above text, and mention any other talents not yet covered. Finally, the summary paragraph is what’s known as a call to action, wherein you invite readers to contact you. You can list your email, or simply mention that you welcome direct messages.

Below the “About” section are the job descriptions themselves. You can copy and paste an abbreviated version of these from your resume.

Essentially, you just need to click “add profile section,” then click “add featured,” which takes you to a page where you can upload media.

Conclusion

Composing a resume and LinkedIn profile from scratch can be daunting, especially if you’re changing fields or joining a new organization. By following the above steps, you can ensure that you present employers with the best version of yourself, emphasizing your key skills — including transferrable skills — while concisely summarizing your professional background. If you make an effort to incorporate keywords from the jobs you’re pursuing, include concrete measures of your achievements, and highlight your key strengths in your LinkedIn profile, you’ll be well on your way to securing the position that’s best suited to your ambitions and talents.