Opening a resume on Microsoft Word will now give you LinkedIn job hints

Need help crafting your resume?

LinkedIn and Microsoft are teaming up on a Resume Assistant tool inside Microsoft Word that promises to help you tailor a resume to your chosen career path, or more specifically, to one of the 11 million jobs posted on LinkedIn.

Microsoft bought the career and business-oriented social network in June 2016 for $26 billion, a play for LinkedIn's professional users and their data. It's slowly begun to knit its productivity-focused software offerings with the job networking site.

Resume Assistant will initially be made available at no extra charge to members of the Microsoft Office 365 Insider program starting Thursday, before it rolls out more broadly to all Microsoft Office 365 subscribers.

The integration between Microsoft and LinkedIn leverages artificial intelligence in letting Resume Assistant surface the skills that portray the job seeker most favorably and to showcase how other professionals in relevant fields described their own work experiences. The information appears inside Word along the right rail.

“The common theme we kept hearing is people were staying in their jobs just to avoid updating their resume,” says Bryan Goode, the general manager of Microsoft’s Office 365, who added that more than 80% of resumes are updated in Word.

In fact, when you open a resume in Word, the Resume Assistant will recognize the document as such and pop up.

It helps, for now anyway, if you already have a pre-populated resume in Word to work with, rather than have a blank slate, though LinkedIn has plans in the near future to help you get started from scratch as well.

What Resume Assistant does not do at the moment is give advice on the precise order in which you present the information on your resume, that is, helping you decide whether it is better to list your educational background on top of your business experiences if that is more relevant, or vice versa.

You don’t have to have a profile on LinkedIn to take advantage of Resume Assistant, but if you so choose during the process, you can get more information on a job post through LinkedIn and apply for any positions of interest. Through Resume Assistant, you can also quietly notify recruiters that you’re open to potential opportunities, or connect to LinkedIn’s ProFinder freelance platform for extra resume or career coaching assistance.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter