LinkedIn is an essential tool for showcasing your experience and qualifications. If you don’t have an account, you’re missing out on opportunities to really show yourself off before the reader even gets your résumé. I’ve gotten offers for jobs based on my LinkedIn profile alone.

I advise my clients who don’t have an account to create one and make sure it’s always complete and current, and we include the URL in the résumé. You want to make sure the URL is customized, though; the URL that’s automatically generated for you has a series of random numbers in it, which looks ugly on the page. One of the first things you want to do when you get set up is to take control of the address and shorten it.

It’s easy. See the video below for a brief demonstration. It took me less than 60 seconds to record it, to give you an idea of how quick the process is.