Get started with this easy, step-by-step guide
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LinkedIn is a platform that many students want to start using, but, for many reasons, never do. Whether that’s waiting for the right moment to create a profile or not knowing where to start, the final outcome is the same.
This comprehensive LinkedIn guide is split over 2 articles and covers 8 different topics that I believe encompass the purpose of LinkedIn for a student. The topics are:
- The importance of having a professional network
- What is LinkedIn?
- How is it useful?
- The basic structure of a profile
- How to make your profile stand out
- Networking on LinkedIn
- Posting on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn ‘culture’
Additionally, I have included useful resources at the end. This article includes the first 4 topics. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the world of LinkedIn!
1. The Importance of Having a Professional Network
As a student, it may seem that developing a professional network is a task that can be put off until after graduation. However, it is more important than many of us think.
Creating and growing a professional network can provide us with opportunities that can otherwise be more challenging to obtain. Your professional network can help with the following:
Help you find a job
It is common to hear that many people only apply for their first-ever job. All their subsequent jobs are obtained through their professional network. People who know and appreciate your skills and think you are a good fit for the job can recommend you at their company if a new post becomes available.
Mentor you
People with more experience in your network whose line of business and values align with yours can mentor you. Mentoring allows you to gain experience from someone who is where you hope to be in the future. Also, this opportunity allows you to gain an insight into the role/company/industry that you are working towards moving to.
One way mentoring really helped me is by navigating professional situations that I have not experienced before. My mentor gave me really good advice about situations that I have not been in before, but they often experience due to their number of years in the industry.
2. What Is LinkedIn?
According to the LinkedIn website, LinkedIn is:
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the internet. You can use LinkedIn to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career.
LinkedIn can be accessed from a laptop, a phone or a tablet via an app.
3. How Is It Useful For You/Reasons to Create a Profile?
From my experience as a student, LinkedIn is useful in many ways:
Create An Online Presence (Professionally)
This was my biggest motivator to create a LinkedIn profile. In today’s world, having an online presence is really important, as most transactions and interactions happen online (whether we like it or not is a different question).
LinkedIn acts as an online resume/CV that is easy to update and link when applying to jobs. You can also link your LinkedIn profile in your CV, this allows recruiters to see more information that you were not able to include in the 1-page CV.
Connect With Recruiters
By optimising your LinkedIn profile, recruiters can find and message you about potential roles if they think you are a suitable candidate.
This is how a lot of small and medium-sized businesses recruit for vacant roles. Therefore, if you are looking for a job or internship, a good way to increase your exposure is to have a LinkedIn presence.
As for big companies like Facebook, Google, etc., their recruiters usually make LinkedIn posts about vacant roles and direct readers to a link to apply. Therefore, connecting with your region’s recruiters is a great way to use LinkedIn.
For example:
If you are Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)-based and looking for a job in technology, following or connecting with Google’s EMEA recruiters allows you to see their posts and any updates on potential jobs.
Connect With Opportunities
Connecting with opportunities involves finding volunteering experiences, learning about competitions and relevant events, as well as coming across useful career tips and resources.
There is a plethora of careers-related resources on LinkedIn from people with a wide range of experiences.
Develop Skills
Using LinkedIn Learning, where you can get your first month for free, allows you to develop your skills and get certificates to showcase. These certificates can be used when applying for jobs, and are especially helpful if you are in your early years at university and are struggling to get an internship.
4. The Basic Structure of a Profile
A LinkedIn profile consists of the following sections:
Profile photo
This must be a professional picture, preferably a headshot. The easiest thing to do is to get someone to take a picture of you wearing a shirt with a white background (a white wall). You don’t need fancy equipment for this, you just need to make sure it’s clear and formal as potential employers will be seeing this.
A profile photo results in up to 21x more profile visits
Headline
This should reflect your current position and any great achievements you want people to see before clicking on your profile. If you are a student, you can write what year you are in and what course you are doing. For example:
‘Final Year Electronic And Computer Engineering Student’
Make sure you add the location where you want to work using the location feature, as it will increase your chances of appearing in job searches by 23x.
Summary
Keep your summary formal. Mention what you are currently doing, what you hope to do (in your professional career) and maybe an interesting fact about you.
I personally went for a different approach to my profile, as I more actively use LinkedIn. This format was adopted from someone in my network. I have to regularly maintain and update this summary. If this is something you don’t mind doing, feel free to adopt this format.
Experience
Try to avoid just listing your work experience. Incomplete or empty job experience descriptions may raise questions with potential recruiters. Therefore, having 2–3 bullet points or a short paragraph explaining your role, results and impact is key.
Education
Arguably the most important section for students. Students, especially at early stages in their career, do not have any work experience.
Listing your education allows you to appear in searches 17 times more than people who do not.
I personally like to list the modules that I did as part of that level of education to give recruiters an idea of my technical skills.
Additional
The following sections all fall under what would be the ‘Additional’ section of a CV:
- Licenses and Certifications
- Volunteer Experience
- Skills and Endorsements
- Accomplishments
- Interests
Try to include all the relevant information in these sections. For skills, ensure that you put at least 5 relevant skills to the roles that you want. Recruiters often use skills as keywords to find potential candidates, which makes this section very powerful.
Useful Resources
- Wonsulting
- Some tips about LinkedIn from LinkedIn (source)
- Message templates for different occasions (source)
- Templates for announcing a new job (source)
Stay tuned for part II of this mini-series!