How to Upload Your Resume to LinkedIn

There are two uploads with two different audiences, and the difference between them is whether strangers can read your phone number.

Updated October 2026

Where does the resume actually go?

There are exactly two destinations, and it helps to think of them as two different products that happen to accept the same PDF.

Destination one is a job application. You attach the file during the application flow, it goes to the employer who posted that job, and it stops there. Nothing about your profile changes.

Destination two is your profile. The file becomes a visible card, usually in the Featured section, and it functions as published material rather than as correspondence.

There is no third destination. No general-purpose resume slot, no "my documents" area recruiters search through, no setting that quietly makes your file available to employers at large. Hunting for one is the most common reason people conclude the feature was removed.

How do you attach a resume to a job application?

On a posting that uses LinkedIn's own application flow, the resume step appears partway through, after your contact details. You choose a file from your device, it uploads, and you continue.

LinkedIn keeps a short list of the resumes you have used recently, so the next application offers them back to you instead of making you dig through your downloads folder again. That list lives in your settings, under data privacy, in the job application section — the same place you go to delete the ones you no longer want stored.

On a posting that sends you to the company's own careers site, LinkedIn is not involved in the upload at all. The file goes to that company's system under its own rules, and nothing you do there is stored on LinkedIn.

The practical point: an attached resume is correspondence. One employer, one posting, one copy. It does not accumulate into anything public.

How do you put a resume on your profile?

This is the Featured section, and it has a step people miss: the section does not exist on your profile until you add it. If you are hunting for somewhere to attach a document and finding nothing, that is usually why.

From your own profile, open the option to add a profile section, find Featured among the recommended ones, and add it. Once the section is there, you can add a media item to it and upload your document.

The About section and individual Experience entries also accept media, so a resume can be attached to a specific role rather than floating at the top of the profile. Those are public too.

PDF is the sensible format, because it keeps your layout intact on whatever device opens it. The upload dialog lists which file types it accepts and the size it allows — read what it says rather than trusting a number you found in an article, since that is the kind of detail that changes quietly.

Should the resume on your profile be public?

Sometimes, with edits. A resume written to be emailed to one recruiter is not the same document as a resume published to the open internet, and most people upload the first one without rewriting it.

The contact block is the problem. A standard resume carries a mobile number, a personal email address, and often a city and street, and on your profile that block is downloadable by anyone who opens the card.

So make a second version for Featured: strip the phone number and the address, leave an email you are comfortable publishing or no contact details at all, and let the message button do that job.

Then consider who else is reading. Your current employer and your colleagues can see your profile, and a resume appearing in Featured is read as a statement.

And consider age. A document sits there until you remove it, so a Featured resume still listing a job you left two years ago is worse than none at all.

Why can't I find an upload button?

Because there is no upload button at the profile level, and that is the honest answer rather than a workaround.

People look around the headline, around the photo, and in the edit panel for the intro, expecting something called "upload resume." It is not there. The upload lives inside the job application flow and inside the Featured section, and you get to both from somewhere else.

The mobile app and the desktop site also arrange this differently, and adding a profile section is more obvious on desktop. If you have spent ten minutes tapping around the app, open the site on a computer and the path is usually shorter.

One more thing worth checking before you conclude something is broken: you can only add media to a section that already exists. No Featured section means nothing to attach to, and the interface does not explain that — it simply offers you no option.

The profile is the part that gets searched

A resume is a document. A profile is a set of fields — headline, about, job titles, dates, skills. Recruiter tools search fields.

So do not move your keywords into the attached file and leave the profile thin. Whatever you want to be found for belongs in the headline, the About section, and the Experience entries, in plain language. Treat the attached document as something a person reads after they have already found you, not as the thing that makes them find you.

LinkedIn also goes the other direction: on your own profile, the More menu offers a save-to-PDF option that exports what is there. It is a plain document rather than a designed resume, but it shows you exactly what a reader sees when they skim.

Last, keep the two in agreement. A Featured resume listing different dates or a different job title than the Experience section below it is a mismatch a reader notices immediately, and it reads as carelessness rather than a typo.

Questions people ask about uploading a resume to LinkedIn