LinkedIn resume builder: what an import keeps, and what you redo

Turn your LinkedIn profile into a resume: the three import routes, why Save to PDF only works on English profiles, and every field you still have to rewrite.

Your LinkedIn profile already holds most of your resume. Every job, every date, every school. Retyping it feels absurd, and a dozen tools promise to do it in one click.

They can move the data. They cannot turn a profile into a resume, because the two documents are written for different readers. This guide shows the three ways to get your profile out of LinkedIn, what each field looks like once it lands in a resume, and the part you still have to write yourself.

Three ways to get your profile out of LinkedIn

Every LinkedIn resume builder uses one of three routes. Which one works for you depends on your profile more than on the tool.

LinkedIn's own Save to PDF. On your profile, click More, then Save to PDF. LinkedIn's help page lists conditions that the guides ranking for this search leave out. The Save to PDF option "currently supports only English characters", and both the profile and your language setting must be in English. It is not available in the mobile app. LinkedIn also caps it at 200 PDF downloads a month, your own profile included.

So if your profile is in French, Spanish or German, there is no PDF. Every converter that asks you to upload that PDF is closed to you before you start.

Pasting your profile URL. Some tools fetch your public profile from its address. They only see what your public profile shows, so check your public profile settings first. A field hidden from the public is a field the tool never gets.

A browser extension on the open page. The extension reads the profile already on your screen, in your own logged-in session. Nothing depends on a language setting or a public profile, but the extension can only read what the page displays. That limit matters more than it sounds, and we come back to it below.

What survives the trip, field by field

An import copies fields. It does not decide what a recruiter needs from each one. Here is what happens to each part of a profile with our own importer, and what you do next. Other tools differ in the details, so treat this as the checklist to run on whatever you use.

On LinkedIn	After import	What you do
Headline	Target job title	Replace it with the title of the job you want
About, up to 2,600 characters	Professional summary, word for word	Cut it to three or four lines
Role descriptions	One bullet per line of text	Split paragraphs, add a result to each bullet
Skills, up to 100	One skills list, all of them	Keep the ones the posting asks for
Email, phone	Empty	Type them in
Recommendations, endorsements	Not imported	Nothing. They do not belong on a resume
Languages, projects, volunteering	Not imported	Add the ones that matter for the role

The limits are LinkedIn's own. Its Talent Blog gives 2,600 characters for About, and LinkedIn Help allows up to 100 skills. The "after import" column is what the HiredFolio importer does, read from its code.

Headline is not a resume title

LinkedIn writes your headline for you. It is "usually created when you add a new and current position", LinkedIn Help says, so many headlines are just the current job. Others grew into taglines: "Helping SaaS teams scale | Product | Speaker".

A resume title has one job. It tells the recruiter, in the posting's words, which role you are applying for. "Senior product manager, B2B SaaS" does that. The tagline does not, and screening software searches for the posting's job title, not for your personal brand.

About is not a summary

About is written in the first person, for someone browsing your profile. It can run to 2,600 characters. A resume summary is three or four lines that a recruiter reads in seconds, on the same page as everything else.

An import that copies About into the summary gives you a half-page block of text at the top of your resume. Keep the one sentence that says what you do and for whom, add the strongest number you have, and delete the rest. Our guide to optimising your LinkedIn profile goes the other way and explains what About is for.

Example an About section cut down to a resume summary

Pasted from About

I'm a curious, people-first marketer who loves turning data into stories. Over the past eight years I've had the chance to work with amazing teams across retail and tech, and I'm always looking for my next challenge...

Resume summary

Performance marketer, 8 years in retail and SaaS. Cut cost per lead 34% at a 40-person e-commerce brand by rebuilding paid search around margin, not clicks.

Skills: 100 on LinkedIn, a dozen on a resume

On LinkedIn, more skills mean more searches you can appear in, so a long list makes sense. On a resume, 60 skills hide the five the posting asks for. Keep the skills the posting names, in its wording, and drop the rest.

What never makes it: contact details, recommendations, endorsements

Our importer leaves email and phone empty, and copies no website links beyond your LinkedIn URL. Type them in. It takes ten seconds, and you choose which address recruiters see.

Recommendations and endorsements stay behind too, and that is correct. A resume is your claims backed by numbers. Quotes from former colleagues belong on LinkedIn, where a recruiter can see who wrote them.

Before you import, open every "Show all"

A LinkedIn profile page does not list everything. Each section shows a few entries, then a "Show all" link to a separate page with the full list. Any tool that reads the profile page only gets the entries on screen. The older roles, the extra certifications and most of the skills are on those other pages.

With our extension, a section that comes back short almost always means LinkedIn was still collapsing it. Open that section's "Show all" page and run the import again from there.

Check the dates too, whatever tool you use. A date written "Jan 2020" on LinkedIn has to become a real date in the resume, and month names in other languages are where converters slip. A role that moves from April to January changes nothing for you and looks like a lie to a recruiter who compares it with your LinkedIn.

Why the Save to PDF file is not your resume

The PDF LinkedIn generates is a printout of your profile, with every section in LinkedIn's order and none of the choices a resume makes. Jobscan and LoopCV both warn that screening software can read its multi-column layout out of order. We explain why multi-column PDFs break in our guide to ATS resume filters.

Use the PDF as a source, not as an attachment. Even with a perfect layout, it would still carry the full About, the full skills list and every role since your first job.

Turning the import into a resume you can send

Once the data is in an editor, the work is the same as writing any resume, just without the typing.

Rewrite each bullet as a result. LinkedIn descriptions say what you were responsible for. A resume says what changed because you were there, with a number.
Cut what the role does not need. Roles from 15 years ago can shrink to a title, company and dates. Side projects stay only if they prove a skill the posting asks for.
Tailor to the posting. Change the title, the summary and the order of bullets for each application. A profile is written for everyone. A resume is written for one job.

Our guide to writing an effective resume covers the bullets and structure in detail.

Using HiredFolio's LinkedIn import

The HiredFolio extension for Chrome and Firefox reads the LinkedIn profile open in your browser. It does not crawl LinkedIn or fetch profiles in the background. It does not need LinkedIn's PDF, so the English-only rule does not apply. Check the dates after import all the same.

It captures your name, headline, location, About, experience, education, skills and certifications into a form in the side panel. You can edit or remove any entry there, and nothing is saved until you click to create the resume. The resume then opens in the editor on a single-column template with standard section headings.

What it does not do, so you are not surprised:

It does not add your email, phone or website links. You type those in.
It does not shorten your About or trim your skills. The table above is still your job.
It only sees what the page shows. Open the "Show all" pages first.

If your profile is in English and you already have the Save to PDF file, the CV dashboard also has an Import LinkedIn option that reads that PDF the same way it reads any uploaded resume.

Turn your LinkedIn profile into a resume with the HiredFolio extension

Key takeaways before you import your profile

Open every "Show all" page on your profile before you import, or older roles and most skills stay behind.

Replace the imported headline with the posting's job title and cut About to three or four lines.

Type in your email and phone and check every date against your profile before you send anything.

The import itself takes a minute: turn your LinkedIn profile into a resume.