From the course: Writing a Resume

When to include publications on your resume

From the course: Writing a Resume

When to include publications on your resume

- Have you appeared in print? Been quoted in an article? Of course, if you authored a book, ebook, trade association article, industry paper, or anything else of importance, publications would be the section to list it in. If you're in PR, marketing, or academia, this section is probably a no brainer. But us regular people can use this section too. With the increased popularity of blogging, it's difficult not to have something in this section. LinkedIn has made this easy. I get more than 10 notifications each day about a new blog post by one of my LinkedIn connections. So, a word of caution here, listing a LinkedIn post you wrote is probably not acceptable unless the post you wrote is relevant to the job you are applying to and it garnered a large number of views. What's a large number? Take a look at well-respected blogs and see what kind of views they get. While you may not hit a 100,00 views, 2,500 might be a good goal. And to be clear, I mentioned these numbers in relation to the relevance aspect of the article. Will a recruiter think your information is relevant if only 100 people read it? Maybe, maybe not. I've said this previously, and it's just as true now as it was before, if you write something, expect someone to read it, and you should always be writing with that expectation. Therefore, anything you post should be professional in nature because once it hits the internet, you can't take it back and you have no control over where it goes or who reads it. Will a recruiter or potential employer read everything you post? Probably not. Will they read at least one thing? The answer is, it depends. They may not read anything at first, but if you make it past a phone interview, it's much more likely that they'll take the time to read it. I've known candidates who were removed from consideration because of what they wrote on the internet. Future employers want to know if you are a subject matter expert. Writing outside of your regular job helps you establish this expertise. It shows that you have the knowledge and that others think this knowledge is relevant because they have not only read it, but they have liked it and shared it. You can indicate this on your resume by adding a section labeled publications. If you have enough relevant material to warrant its own section. If not, and you only have one or two relevant works, you can add them as a bullet point under your current job, if it's applicable. Alternatively, you may want to include it in your volunteer work or consulting work section. Think back over your career and think about works you may have written, trade magazines, an article for your company newsletter, an industry journal, or an online blog, find the work and then determine its relevance to the job you're applying to. Once you've done that, don't forget the last part, determine the value. Was your article read by the many or the few?

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