LinkedIn’s Built-In Save to PDF
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.
August 12th, 2007 at 2:05 am
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August 12th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Nice find, Scott!
I actually like this one. And you’re correct: it is a nice, clean rendering from Linkedin to PDF
Thanks!
October 9th, 2007 at 7:27 am
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!
February 21st, 2008 at 6:02 am
[...] – Save to PDF I’m not sure when LinkedIn actually introduced this, as it was never announced, but we’ll call [...]