Making Your Résumé and Other Files Downloadable from Your LinkedIn Profile

Why make your résumé or work samples available through your LinkedIn profile, especially if they're already available on your business web site? I always say: The more ways there are for potential clients to find you, the better.

LinkedIn used to have an arrangement with Box.com that would allow users to add Box as an application for their LinkedIn profile. This was handy for making available files for profile viewers to download, such as a PDF of a résumé. A few months ago, that arrangement ended and LinkedIn redesigned users' profiles. A colleague asked me how to make a PDF available now through her LinkedIn profile, and it occurred to me that she might not be the only one who would like instructions for how to do that. Here they are:

1. Upload the PDF to storage space that you have online somewhere, such as with Box.com or Dropbox. Once it has finished uploading, copy and paste the direct link for the PDF into Notepad on your computer (or into any program on your computer that will allow you to paste a link into it).
 
2. Log in to your LinkedIn profile and click the blue button that reads "Edit your profile."
 
3. Hover your cursor near an appropriate section of your LinkedIn profile, such as "Experience," in which you would like for your PDF to appear. Look for a blue rectangle with a plus sign in its lower right-hand corner. Click that rectangle.
 
4. Add the link to your PDF (which you recorded in Notepad) in the "Add a link" box that appears.
 
5. Click the blue "Done editing" box near the top of the page, close to your photograph.

If you already have a link to your résumé or other files you want to share available through your business web site, you can just copy and paste that link into the fourth step above. All that matters is for the file or files to available somewhere online.

Note: The ability to share files from your LinkedIn profile entails using what LinkedIn calls its "rich media feature." The feature hasn't been rolled out yet to some LinkedIn users who weren't sharing files via their LinkedIn profiles before LinkedIn took away access to applications such as Box.com, so if the above instructions don't work for you now, they may soon.

Updated on July 31, 2013, at 12:15 p.m.: LinkedIn has now rolled out file-sharing abilities for all LinkedIn users. Here is a post on the blog of Copyediting newsletter describing what LinkedIn users can do with this capability. And here is a page from the Help section of LinkedIn that lists the types of files that can now be displayed on LinkedIn profiles, through various content-provider intermediaries.


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Desks That Move You

In my first contribution for Copyediting newsletter's Business of Editing column (April–May issue), I talk about the need for editors like you and me to maintain our most important business tool—our body. Exercise isn't the only technique we must use to keep our bodies in good working shape. We also have to get moving much more often throughout our entire workday. We can't just exercise in the morning and then sit all the time we're working. Sitting all day negates the effects of exercising.

When we sit, levels of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase in our leg muscles drop drastically. That enzyme pulls fat (triglycerides) out of our blood so that our body can use it for fuel. If lipoprotein lipase isn't pulling out enough triglycerides, then their level in our blood zooms up, increasing our risk for heart disease.¹

Lots of sitting also increases the level of glucose, a type of sugar that our bodies use as an energy source, in our blood and makes our body resistant to our own natural insulin. That means our body has to work harder to get glucose into our cells, which sets us up for type 2 diabetes.^2,3 Researcher and exercise physiologist Travis Saunders wrote, "In other words, an afternoon on the couch makes you measurably closer to having type 2 diabetes,"² but he could just as well have been talking about the effects of spending an afternoon sitting at our work desk.

One of the methods for getting moving more frequently that I suggest in my column is to use a sit–stand desk,⁴ a standing desk, or treadmill desk, and alternate throughout the day between sitting and standing or between sitting and very slow walking. You can buy desks and equipment to do this, or you can put together your own setup. Here are links to vendors of desks and stands, plus links to articles and blogs posts on do-it-yourself arrangements:

• Adjustable-height desks from BeyondTheOfficeDoor.com

• Adjustable-height desks from Ergo Depot

• Adjustable-height desks from Ergo Desktop

• Adjustable-height desks from GeekDesk

• Anderlyn Stand Up Desk

• Computer-monitor arms and adjustable-height desks from Ergotron

• Laptop stands from AirDesk

• Laptop stands from Techni Mobili: here and here

• Monitor risers and keyboard risers from Staand Up Desk

• Sigma Sit-Stand Desk from Dane Decor

• Sit–stand workstation from Balt

• Standing desks from UpDesk

• SurfShelf laptop holder

• Treadmill desk from TrekDesk

• Treadmill desk from Walkstation

• WorkEZ ergonomic stands from Uncaged Ergonomics

• WorkEZ ergonomic stands from Uncaged Ergonomics

• " 'A Hamster Wheel with E-mail': The Treadmill Desk"

• "Custom DIY Standing Desk with Ergotron LX Dual Stacking Arm, Made from IKEA NUMERÄR Countertop"

• "A Homemade Sit/Stand Desk"

• "My $47 Collapsible Standing Desk"

______________________
¹Kravitz L. Too much sitting is hazardous to your health? [monograph on the Internet]. Available from: http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/sittingUNM.html.

²Saunders T. Sitting for just a couple hours has measurable (and negative) health impact. Obesity Panacea 2012 April 4. Available from: http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2012/04/04/sitting-for-just-a-couple-hours-has-measurable-and-negative-health-impact/.

³Saunders TJ, Larouche R., Colley RC, Tremblay MS. Acute sedentary behaviour and markers of cardiometabolic risk: a systematic review of intervention studies. Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism 2012;2012:712435. doi:10.1155/2012/712435. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3382951/.

⁴O'Moore-Klopf K. Why I'm a convert to standing at work. EditorMom 2012 June 1. Available from: http://editor-mom.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-im-convert-to-standing-at-work.html.


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How to Ask for Advice

My friend and colleague Amy Schneider posted this to her Facebook profile and gave me permission to share it here. Her criterion is one I use in deciding whether I'll mentor a fellow editorial pro:

I'll never understand the posts I see online that go something like this: "I've just started my editorial services business. Does anyone have any advice on [how to run it]? Any tips greatly appreciated!" Cart before the horse, and in the age of Google especially flummoxing. Sure, we all ask for advice. But to start there? I wish I had had access to the wealth of information that's available now back when I started my business. I did most of my information gathering the old-fashioned way. I was barely using e-mail at the time. If you're going to be a self-employed editor (or, for that matter, self-employed in any field), your number one skill needs to be ... finding information on your own.

After you've done your research, there's a way to ask and get the information you want: Ask very specific questions, not the general "Any advice?" But when you give the impression that you haven't done any research yourself and want to learn, in a half hour, what it has taken a veteran years to learn (hat tip to my colleague Enid Rosenstiel for that description), that doesn't sit well. When I mentor people, I want them to be go-getters and show plenty of initiative. I don't want to spoon-feed them. If you don't develop the skill of doing your own legwork, you likely won't survive as a solopreneur.

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Final Step on the Journey

Hurray! It's here—Journey of a Konkani Family! In addition to editing the book, I wrote the about-the-book and about-the-author blurbs on the back cover, which I have reproduced here for your reading pleasure.

Book summary:
Being a citizen in a multicultural world requires a knowledge of history, from the personal to the global. But young Konkanis born and raised in the United States may be unfamiliar with the legends and customs of their Indian heritage, as well as with the story of the exile and dispersal of their ancestors from Goa beginning in the sixteenth century. For them, this true story of one family within the larger story of history will bring to life the language and community traditions of a culture they will want to get to know. Their guide in this engrossing tale, told with humor and compassion and packed with universal truths, is a man with roots in both the traditional Konkani world and the modern American world.

About the author:
Mulki Radhakrishna Bhat, a Konkani from Udupi on the west coast of Karnataka, grew up in India as part of a large, close family with rich cultural traditions. He immigrated to the United States as a young adult, navigated its very different cultural traditions, and had a long career as a nuclear physicist. He and his wife, Padma, who live on Long Island in New York, have one son, whose questions inspired him to tell the story of several generations of his family within the context of the India diaspora.

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I am hugely grateful to my colleague Joan Pendleton, who subscribes to both the Freelance and Copyediting-L e-mail lists as I do, for referring the book's author to me when he was seeking an editor.

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Mentea (Mentee Tea)

What a lovely surprise! These exotically scented teas just arrived, along with a sweet handwritten letter, from a grateful mentee of mine. She's made my day! And my office smells delicious!

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