When was the last time you checked your privacy settings on LikedIn? If it is some time ago, you may not realise there is a new setting related to the Resume Assistant feature.
In November 2017, LinkedIn announced that with this feature you will get the inspiration and resources to craft a compelling resume directly within Microsoft Word, and you’ll see relevant job opportunities on LinkedIn that are personalised for you.
Resume Assistant pulls LinkedIn insights from millions of member profiles so you can see examples of how professionals in a specific role describe their work. You can see the skills other professionals in a specific role and industry have, so you can add them if applicable to your profile.
You can read more about this integration between LinkedIn and Microsoft here. Resume Assistant is available first in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, New Zealand, United, Kingdom, and United States of America for Office 365 users. Learn the steps to use it here.
You may think this a great feature, but it does mean that it makes it easier for your LinkedIn profile to be copied. I had this happen to me some years ago where I noticed a member of my network on LinkedIn had copied the structure and many details from my LinkedIn Summary. And it has happened again recently when I noticed that part of my LinkedIn profile had been taken word for word and used by someone else I know.
This plagiarism was done without the help of the new LinkedIn Resume Assistant. When you take time to craft your profile to represent your skills, expertise and personal brand, it is disheartening and annoying to see someone has copied your profile.
Thanks to a Tweet I noticed on Twitter from the Avid Careerist, I reviewed the privacy settings on LinkedIn and noticed they have been changed.
Now you can disable work experience descriptions from your LinkedIn profile from being shown in Resume Assistant.
To find this setting you will need to navigate to your Privacy Settings on your profile (find it in the top navigation bar on LinkedIn).
In the Privacy Settings you need to scroll down to the Data Privacy And Advertising section. There you will see the option to turn off the ability for Resume Assistant to pull in details from your LinkedIn profile – note that by default this is set to ‘On’ so if you want to opt out you need to manually adjust this privacy setting.
So perhaps it is time to review your LinkedIn privacy settings if you do not want to have your profile easily accessible via Microsoft Resume Assistant.
Do you plan to allow your profile to be able to be accessed using the LinkedIn Microsoft Resume Assistant?
If you have questions about using LinkedIn effectively in your organisation for online visibility and integrating it into your employee ambassador programme, or you feel you need to brush up your LinkedIn profile to help you stand out online, you can schedule a private consultation with me here.
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