How to Upload a Resume to LinkedIn (and Who Actually Sees It)
Three different routes for putting a resume on LinkedIn, with file requirements, limits and visibility. Two are for applying; one puts it on display. They are not interchangeable.
There are three ways to upload a resume to LinkedIn, and the difference is not convenience: it changes who can see it. Two are for applying; one publishes it on your profile. The file on your profile also cannot be used for job applications.
The requirements and limits below come from LinkedIn’s help pages on uploading a resume, checked 4 October 2026.
First, the file
LinkedIn states that “the file format must be either Microsoft Word or PDF” and recommends “a file size less than 2MB” (LinkedIn help).
Two megabytes is a lot for a text document and very little for one with a high-resolution photo inside it. If your file exceeds that, the cause is almost always the image, not the text.
Route 1: in your job application settings
Use this if you want the resume ready before you find the right posting.
You can upload it “from the Job Application Settings page by clicking Upload under the Resume section.” The same place is reachable from the Jobs tab, then Preferences, then Resumes and application data.
This is also where the list of saved files lives, and its limit is worth knowing: LinkedIn will “save a copy and retain your four most recently uploaded resumes,” so you can reuse them for later applications (LinkedIn help).
Four is few, and it fills up quickly. The real risk is not running out of room: it is attaching an eight-month-old version by accident because the filenames looked alike. When you update your resume, delete the old ones from that list instead of letting them pile up.
Route 2: during the application
Search for the job, open it, click Easy Apply, fill in the required fields, and then upload the resume.
Visibility here is the narrowest of the three, and that is good news: “if you upload your resume while applying for a job on LinkedIn, it’ll be shared with that hirer.” That one, not the others.
It is also worth knowing what happens next: if the job poster downloads the file, you may receive a notification. What that notification actually means is a separate question, and the answer is less encouraging than it sounds.
Route 3: on your profile, on display
This one differs from the other two, and should be chosen with open eyes.
Upload the document to your profile and you can “share it with your network,” while anyone visiting the page “will have the option to download it directly from your profile page.” LinkedIn is equally clear about the other side: “if you post a resume as a media attachment to your LinkedIn profile or in a LinkedIn post, it will be visible to anyone viewing your profile or that post.”
Anyone. That includes your current employer, your colleagues, and any fake account passing through. A resume normally carries a phone number, an email address and sometimes the city you live in — details you would not have posted on a public profile one by one.
And there is the functional limit already quoted: “you won’t be able to use the resume uploaded to your profile for job applications.” It is there to be looked at, not to apply with.
If you do use this route, a sensible precaution is to prepare a separate version of the file, without your home address and with a single contact channel. In our editor you can switch individual sections off: they stay in the project but do not reach the export, so you can keep one version for applications and one for display without doing the work twice.
Where your resume lives on LinkedIn, and how to replace it
The files you uploaded while applying are not on your profile: they live in your job application settings. The path is Jobs, then Preferences, then the resumes and application data section. It is the same place as Route 1, and it is the only list that matters when you apply.
Replacing is not a separate action. You upload the new file and the old one stays in the list beside it. Nothing is overwritten. And this is exactly where the most common and most invisible mistake comes from — attaching an eight-month-old version because the filenames looked alike.
The limit makes it concrete: LinkedIn keeps “your four most recently uploaded resumes” (LinkedIn help, checked 12 October 2026). Four is few, and it fills up fast.
There is one practical rule. When you update your resume, delete the old ones from that list straight away instead of letting them accumulate. A list with one file in it cannot go wrong.
How to delete a resume from LinkedIn
In that same list, each file has a remove option. Two things that look identical are worth separating:
- Deleting from the list takes the file out of your list and out of future applications.
- It does not touch applications already sent. A resume already attached to an application has been delivered to that company, and may already have been downloaded or forwarded. A deletion made today does not recall it.
If the problem is a wrong file already sent, deleting is not the route: applying again where the posting allows it, or saying so in the accompanying message, is.
The file on your profile is removed from the profile’s featured section instead, not from this list — they are two separate stores that do not talk to each other.
Uploading from your phone
Both application routes exist in the app, and the logic does not change: the file is attached during the application, or uploaded in advance in the preferences. Only the menu locations differ.
Two things matter more than the exact path. The first is where the file comes from: on a phone a resume usually arrives from a storage app or an email attachment, and it has to be picked carefully because the filename is all you see. The second is that checking the file before sending, on a phone screen, is close to useless — page breaks and substituted characters show themselves on a large screen.
If you have the choice, prepare and check the file on a computer and use the phone only for sending.
File requirements, and what goes wrong most often
Format and size are documented: “the file format must be either Microsoft Word or PDF” with “a file size less than 2MB” (LinkedIn help, checked 12 October 2026).
The usual stumbles follow from that:
- The file is over 2MB. The cause is almost always a high-resolution photo inside the document, not the text. Shrink the image, not the content.
- The format is not accepted. Pages, ODT, RTF and images are not on the list. Export to PDF or DOCX before trying again.
- You attached an image, or a PDF with no text layer. It uploads without complaint and then an application system extracts nothing from it. Copy a paragraph out of the file into a plain text editor: if no text comes out, it is not a readable resume.
- You attached the wrong version. No error message, no way to notice. That is why the list is worth keeping short.
The third thing you upload without noticing
After you apply, LinkedIn offers to share your resume data with all recruiters, and that toggle “will be turned on” (LinkedIn help).
This is a setting separate from the three routes, and it deserves a careful read. Recruiters see your profile in search results based on resume data, but they “will not have access to your full resume unless you provide it to them directly.” LinkedIn also states that it takes “steps to prevent LinkedIn Recruiter users who work at your company and related companies from seeing that you have shared a resume.”
The window is long: searches draw on resumes “that you’ve saved over the past 2 years.” Two years is long enough for the content to go stale without you thinking about it again.
To switch it off: Jobs tab, then Preferences, then Resumes and application data, and turn off sharing resume data with recruiters.
Which route is the right one
| If you want to… | Use | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| apply to a posting | the upload inside Easy Apply | only that employer |
| be ready for the next applications | job application settings | the employer you later attach it to |
| be found by people viewing your profile | your profile | anyone who visits the profile |
| appear in recruiter searches | the resume-sharing toggle | recruiters, without the full file |
When in doubt, route 2 exposes the least. Route 3 is the only one that makes the file public, and it should be chosen because you want that, not because it was the first button you found.
Before you upload, open the file
Whichever route you take, the document that leaves you is the one software will read. It is worth checking once: the PDF readability test uses a text editor and catches broken contact details and mangled characters. If you need an editable Word version instead, what changes in the DOCX file lists the checks specific to that format.
And if the resume does not exist yet, you can start from the profile you already have: import and manual editing are free, and the step-by-step guide shows which fields to compare with the source before exporting.