LinkedIn is undoubtedly the go to place for professionals, employers and job seekers who want to grow their professional network on the web. LinkedIn has grown into a professional platform where professionals can connect with like minded people and grow their professional network by connecting with companies, recruiters and other people who have similar professional skills and interests.

If you are looking for a change in your career or want to get found by potential recruiters, you shold have some presence on LinkedIn. You should list out your past work experience, the skills you have and get recommendations from previous employers.

If you are reading this article, chances are that you already have a LinkedIn profile and know how the site works. Do you know that you can print your LinkedIn profile into a one page resume? It takes only 5 minutes to download your LinkedIn profile as a PDF resume and print a one page resume or CV, consisting of all your previous experiences, skills, recommendations, education and other career details.

LinkedIn’s Online Resume Builder

Go to LinkedIn’s resume builder, sign in with your LinkedIn account and you instantly get a layout where you can cutomize your LinkedIn resume and print it out. Here is how it looks like:

In the resume builder page, you can choose a resume template which you like. There are several resume templates for LinkedIn, namely – clean, executive, classic, Gray, orange, classic, law, two column, business, blue and plain white. Personally, I would go for the plain white resume, its minimal and presents the work experience and education neatly, without cluttering up the page with unnecessaey design and visual clutter.

You can export your LinkedIn resume as a PDF file or choose to print it right away. This is a great way to keep a resume handy and print it out almost instantly. Related – Resume and cover letter templates in Google Docs.

Choose the visibility of your LinkedIn resume

LinkedIn’s resume builder allows you to host your rsume on the web, so you get a web link of your resume. You can use this link anywhere you want to, a good idea would be to stick it up right at the top of your paper resume or post a link in your blog, Twitter profile, Facebook profile, Google Plus profile and so on.

The good thing regarding LinkedIn’s online resume is that you can choose the visibility to be either public, private or anyone with a link (this is synonmous with YouTube videos). So this allows you to privately share your LinkedIn resume with a specific person or recruiter while keeping it hidden from the rest of the world.

There are several advantages of using a LinkedIn resume over a general hand typed resume written in Microsoft Word. First, your LinkedIn resume is most likely to consist all the work experience that you have stacked along these years. So you no longer have to remember all the work experience by date.

Second, your LInkedIn profile contains recommendations, endorsements and company good will, which is not present in a “self declared” resume. When you present your LinkedIn resume to recruiters, there is a chance that they may decide to cross check your previous work experience on Google, LinkedIn or in the web. That way, you’re directly giving a ready refrence and adding validity to your profile. That goes a long way, as far as nailing the interview is concerned.

DoYouBuzz.com is another cool website which lets you import data and work experience from your LInkedIn profile and lets you convert your LInkedIn profile into a one page resume. But I would still prefer LinkedIn’s own online resume builder because it is simple, easy to use and I don’t have to share my personal information with another third party website.

The next time you need to print out your resume, give LinkedIn’s resume builder a try.