The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students And New Grads
Most of you reading this article will be familiar with social media platform like Facebook, Instagram etc, only few of you might have a LinkedIn account and are actually active on it. We’ll explore why LinkedIn matters as a student, how to create your LinkedIn profile , how to use LinkedIn to network, and how to use LinkedIn to find internships and jobs.
Creating Profile
Well if you new to LinkedIn or not, here are few must things you should have on your LinkedIn profile.
1).Upload an Appropriate photo
This is not a Facebook or Instagram, where you can put group photos or photos with different angles. Upload a professional kind off photo. Make sure you make it visible to all LinkedIn member.
2).Custom URL
Whenever you create your account on LinkedIn, you will get profile URL like www.linkedin.com/in/name-21b72a/ so go to settings and change it to your custom url like www.linkedin.com/in/name-surname/.
3). Write an informative but punchy profile headline and Summary
This is a short, memorable professional ‘slogan.’ It’s the one thing you want a recruiter, hiring manager, or future co-worker to know about you. Tell them what you’re excited about now — and if you can say it succinctly — the great stuff you want to do in the future. For example: “Honors student seeking marketing position” or “Engineer building game-changing consumer products.”
Think of the Summary like the first few paragraphs of your best-written cover letter: Concise about your experience, qualifications, and goals — and if you can, with a compelling narrative weaved throughout. Describe what motivates you, what you’ve done and are skilled at, and what makes you unique. Be clear and confident. Try to use keyword in the headline, this will help you be top while searching.
4). Be smart about your experience
Try to Fill out all the sections given on profile. List all the work you have done till date, add brief information about work and your role in it.Try to summarize your work in bullet points. Don’t forget to add any awards or certificate you received. Mention any course or project work you have completed. Volunteer Experience can also help you land on interview of particular job.
Here are some things you can include in the experience section:
- Internships, both paid and unpaid.
- Part-time jobs/Work From Home
- Entrepreneurial or freelance work
- Volunteer Experience
5). Build A Strong Network
You don’t maximize its value unless you’re building out a network that can go to work for you — whether it’s looking for a job, getting connected to someone who might be able to help you down the road, or seeing interesting content that can make you a better professional from someone in your field. Don’t just stop after connecting with few friends or colleague.
Make sure most of the connection you got are from your field or similar to your field, you might get to know new things and learn stuffs. Beside connecting people with your field, connect with HRs, CEO etc. If you are searching for job/internship than HR profiles will play important role in it.
6). Share your work
Creating LinkedIn account is not all, share your work, achievements. Show world your skills. Post blog, images, videos etc. This will help you get new connections and good number of profile visits. Your post might get into trending and you might get good number or post views and connections. This will create a good number of opportunity for you. Try to post at least twice a month.
7). List your skills
Don’t add skills like MS Work, PowerPoint. Add skills which you are good at and are for job purpose, whatever you do, do not lie about having a skill. Your future employer will find out–it’s just a question of when.
8). Fill Out Your Contact and Personal Info
Add all the info needed like mail ID, any personal or professional portfolio, blog, website. No need to add personal phone number. You can change the privacy setting for phone number and email ID.
Read — How To Create Portfolio
9). Stay Updated
Okay, so you’ve followed all the advice above and you have an exceptional profile to show for it. Now all you need to do is make sure you keep your profile up to date. If you have left any position/job or you started new work. Stay Updated and Be Active On LinkedIn
Once you have a good profile with few connection, than you can directly reach out to company with your LinkedIn profile for job/internship interview. Join groups relevant to your interests or professional goals.
Read — How To Get Experience, Knowledge and Money From Remote Internships While Studying
The Accomplishments section is a catch-all for things that don’t fit in the rest of your profile. If any of them apply to you, by all means add them. The Accomplishments section lets you showcase:
- Publications — If you worked on a paper that was published in an academic journal, had something published in a campus publication, or just published something online, you can list it here.
- Certifications — Have some sort of professional certification outside of your college major? Add it here.
- Patents — Probably not the case for most students (or most people), but you never know.
- Courses — Take a course outside of your college major? This is the place to include it. Make sure that this course is something that goes above and beyond your normal college coursework (i.e., don’t include general education or summer courses that are required for graduation).
- Projects — Work on a cool side project? Show it off (you can include a URL and also add ongoing projects).
- Honors & Awards — Add any awards you have received for academic or extracurricular pursuits.
- Test Scores — I would recommend skipping this section unless you have a very high score and it’s directly relevant to a career or educational opportunity that you’re pursuing. For example, if you have a high GRE score and are applying to graduate school, go ahead and list it.
- Languages — If you speak a language well enough to have at least a basic conversation, then include it here. If your proficiency is lower than basic conversational, I’d suggest you omit it from your profile, as it’s unlikely to be useful for any job duties.
- Organizations — This is where you can list any honor societies, Greek organizations, or professional organizations of which you’re a member. Don’t overlook this one, as I can’t tell you how many people who’ve gotten an interview just on the basis of having been part of the same organization as the hiring manager.
But all of this information will remain just that if you don’t take action. LinkedIn exists to help you make real connections with real people. So what are you waiting for?
Stop reading this article, get out there, and start networking!
