LinkedIn – How to Organize Connections into Different Contact Lists

It looks as though the support for hResume you read about for LinkedIn is only in how your profile is viewed. This is not a feature for importing your hResume content.

Source: LinkedIn Launches hResume

In my own interest, I submitted this question to LinkedIn support for clarification and the final response confirms that hResume formatted importing is NOT supported.

The exchange between LinkedIn support and myself was fruitless and rather annoying. The gist is that it isn't supported, but you can read for yourself if you're interested.

Here is the exchange between LinkedIn support and myself via email:

Me

Is there a way to import my hResume content into LinkedIn? I searched and couldn't find a way to do this.

LinkedIn (Terrance)

Hi Michael,

I believe the link below from our Customer Service Center might best answer your question.

Answer Title: Import Information from Your Résumé to Build Profile Answer Link: http://linkedin.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/linkedin.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1815

LinkedIn provides two areas on the site that are available 24/7 which allow you to access the information you need when you need it. You may want to explore our LinkedIn Learning Center at http://learn.linkedin.com (found under ‘More…’ at the top of your LinkedIn home page). It offers self-paced video training resources created to maximize your LinkedIn experience. Our Customer Service Center ( http://linkedin.custhelp.com ) found at the bottom of your home page also has hundreds of other Frequently Asked Questions and searchable topics.

It is truly my intention to provide you with the best information possible. If this does not address your specific issue or you need additional information on this topic, please do not hesitate to reply to this message and I will be happy to assist you further.

Regards,
Terrence
LinkedIn Customer Support

Me

The "Import my Resume" feature only seems to permit Word, PDF, text or HTML. If uploading from the hResume format is not possible, please be clear and direct about it. Yes (with link or instructions) or no.

LinkedIn (Terrance)

I’m sorry for the inconvenience you experienced attempting to use our Résumé Importer. Our Résumé Importer tool was built to extract key elements from your résumé and suggest places for it on your LinkedIn Profile. Unfortunately, because résumés have different styles and formats, it may not always work or properly recognize every piece of information on a résumé. After importing a résumé, the post-import review page allows you to make adjustments before saving changes to your Profile.

I’ve found that résumés created in simple structures using Microsoft Word® or Adobe PDF® formats tend to work best with the Résumé Importer. Some résumés may not import for other various reasons listed below:

1. The résumé is not written in English.
2. The résumé doesn’t identify sections with words like “experience”, “education”, and “dates of employment”. If these sections are not used, your résumé information may not import properly.
3. The information runs together. It is helpful if each piece of information like Company Name, Position Title or Dates of Employment has its own separate line.

Because the tool won’t work for all résumés, you can manually build your Profile by clicking “Edit” next to the appropriate Profile section. If the information I’ve provided doesn’t explain why it didn’t work for you, please reply with your résumé document attached. I will be happy to review it for you to identify the cause.

Me

Noticing my challenge and anticipating my problem by offering a "helpful" solution in your first response was nice even though you did not answer my initial query. In your second email, you are still trying to solve a perceived problem which I never said I had and side stepped my initial question. Instead of being helpful, you are frustrating me by not answering my direct question TWICE in a row. This is not customer service.

I will assume that importing resumes in an hResume format is NOT supported by LinkedIn unless you respond saying otherwise. Next time, don't ignore your customer's questions by guessing what they really want. (Or at least include the answer they are looking for IN ADDITION to your proposed solution.)

I don't want to hear your apologies. Fix this.

LinkedIn (Terrance)

Unfortunately, at this time we do not have this functionality available to support hResume. Your feedback has been sent to our research and development team for future consideration.

Even though we’re not able to respond individually to numerous recommendations we receive, we’d like to invite you to subscribe to the LinkedIn Blog ( http://blog.linkedin.com ) to begin receiving the latest notifications on site improvements. It’s our way of keeping you and our other members informed on all the exciting work we’re doing behind the scenes.

We appreciate the feedback and believe that together we can create great products for everyone!

If he was your 3rd degree connection, this does not mean you now have 'friends in common'. That would have made him a 2nd degree (you->common friend -> him). What you are looking for is a person whom he and another one of your friends have now in common.

Or to put it in different words - a 2nd degree connection which at least two of your friends share.

I don't know of a way to get this through to the interface. The nearest is to go to Advanced Search, chose 2nd connection and sort by connections. This should show at the bottom how many connections you have to that person. You are looking for two or more. But that's still thousands of people in the 2nd degree network. And you have to expand the connection list every time to check whether your new friend is one of those two+ connections.

Otherwise, you have to use LinkedIn API but that does not seem to be a very friendly interface.