I don’t know when they added this feature*, but it’s pretty cool. LinkedIn has a built-in function to allow you to save a profile to PDF. The resulting PDF is very clean — no graphics, not hyperlinks, full-width text. Here’s mine as an example.
The feature is hidden in plain sight. It’s right at the top of every profile, but it’s in fairly small print, so you may very likely miss it (like I have for I don’t know how long):
Why would you want to use this? I can think of several reasons.
- Unless you have a premium business membership, you can only see the profiles of people within three degrees of you. So if you’re, say, sourcing job candidates or looking for a consultant and want to share the LinkedIn profiles with someone else in your organization who doesn’t have a premium membership, this lets you do so very easily.
- Having a local file on your computer allows you to do all the things you usually do with files — organize them into folders, do searches by folder (i.e., a hand-picked subset, which you couldn’t do on LinkedIn), forward them to other people, attach them to an e-mail or a contact’s entry in a CRM system, etc.
- You can work offline — great if you want to review some profiles on the plane on your next business trip.
- The files are scannable by resume scanning software. I doubt LinkedIn profile URLs are (someone correct me if I’m wrong — seems like it would be a good feature to add).
Hat tip to an anonymous poster on the first Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeover for pointing out both the problem and the solution.
*Hey LinkedIn… would it kill you to publish release notes like everybody else does? Without them, cool new features like this go undiscovered and unutilized until some random person discovers it and posts it on their blog or one of the Yahoo! Groups. And even then, that’s a tiny fraction of your users.
Scott Allen is a social media pioneer, helping people turn virtual relationships into real business since 2002. He is coauthor of The Virtual Handshake and The Emergence of The Relationship Economy and contributor to over a dozen books on social media, business and personal development.
[...] Contact the Webmaster Link to Article yahoo LinkedIn’s Built-In Save to PDF » Posted at Linked Intelligence on Sunday, [...]
Nice find, Scott!
I actually like this one. And you’re correct: it is a nice, clean rendering from Linkedin to PDF
Thanks!
I use this feature all the time! When I’m doing “due diligence” before talking to or meeting a client or peer I use Google and LI to educate myself on the person and her business. It’s a great way to establish rapport. “I see you used to… What did you like about that?” …
What I *really* hope happens is blog software adds this feature too. I print a lot for a portable reading folder I carry, and many posts get cut off. I’m using Firefox, and Aardvark plugin saves my bacon – I use it to (rather tediously) edit the page to make it printable.
Enjoying yor blog!
[...] – Save to PDF I’m not sure when LinkedIn actually introduced this, as it was never announced, but we’ll call [...]
Do you know if they discontinued this feature? I use it all the time (as a clean resume that I can upload on my website without revealing my address to strangers) but noticed today (April 21, 2011) the button was gone?
They didn’t discontinue it, but they moved it. Now, just above the summary, there’s a menu bar that has links for: Share / PDF / Print / vCard / Flag.
I’ve been using LinkedIn for years and never knew this existed.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention (although it looks like I should have figured it out years ago), as well as the new location for where to access the function on the site
This is really a cool feature of LinkedIn. Haven’t noticed it for quite some time too. I used to do the copy pasting one by one or saving the page into html format. Then I have downloaded this software that converts doc files to pdf. Glad linkedin has added this feature, I will not go through all those steps and saving my profile is just done in one click.