The Student's Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn

While college students spend hours tirelessly fine-tuning that resume so it perfectly highlights all their accomplishments, its also important to have an online resume, more specifically, a strong LinkedIn profile. 

At the beginning, LinkedIn was not the platform for us, given that current college students were in elementary school when LinkedIn launched, I’m sure many of us did not bother with a LinkedIn profile until college. For students, having a strong profile that can get found by employers and recruiters can be challenging but not impossible. Today, LinkedIn is the main way employers see everything about you. 

Here are some ways college students can use their LinkedIn profiles as a powerful tool to find the next job or internship opportunity:

1. Have a professional picture of yourself: Although its wonderful to show your incredible sense of style or your copious amounts of friends, leave that for Facebook. This profile is the first thing many employers see when they look you up and match the name to the face so its important to have a professional picture taken so they can already identify you as a hard working individual who is ready for a challenge. 
2. If you're looking to toot your own horn, do it here: LinkedIn is the best platform to do a little self promotion because that can turn into a great opportunity. Show your achievements and how they can directly benefit an organization you wish to work for. Campus organizations, clubs, awards and other experience can show employers you've spent your time in college somewhat wisely. Branding ourselves is something we will always have to be doing, whether we have a job or not. 
3. Don’t just list all the things you did, describe them: Yes employers do not have all day to read all the accomplishments you have had on your profile, but naming a few and briefly describing your role in each position helps them see the experience you’ve had in a nutshell and whether or not the position they are hiring for fits with your experience. 
4. Give your profile a little love: Although we clearly spend most of our time on other social media platforms, neglecting your LinkedIn is just not a good idea. Join a group, participate in a discussion, comment on an article, update your status, endorse someone or update your information—anything that shows you regularly keep up with your account and its not something that you made because your professor told you to and then never look at again. You can connect with a lot of great people on the platform but the profile needs to fully represent you in the best light possible. 
5. Connect with your classmates: LinkedIn is a way to professionally connect with fellow students and meet new people. You can see what your classmates are up to, their experience, skills and more. Alumni are also great people to connect with because they can give you advice about the current job market, get you in touch with the right people and overall be on your side as a fellow former Dawg. Plus, everyone could use a mentor or two. This becomes useful several years down the road when someone may be looking for a transition and take their career down another path and those connections can be useful in the long run as well. 
6. Ask questions and do some stalking: Participating in group discussions shows that you are genuinely interested in what people have to say. If you raise an interesting point, members of the group will want to check out your profile, connect with you or even send you a message. It shows that there is a person behind the profile that is eager to learn from more experienced people. It's a great way to explore career choices that you wouldn’t have otherwise known about and connect with the people who specialize in that. The best way to learn about your dream job is to ask the people who are in that industry. Pick their brains a little, they will appreciate your motivation and desire to learn from them. 
7. Use your headline to stand out: People on LinkedIn will be searching for people, an appealing headline will make it easier to be found. The headline will be one of the first things they see so make sure it holds their attention and make them want to explore your profile a bit more. 

Finding a job after college is a journey that takes time and patience and LinkedIn can play an important role in that. By making your profile reflect you as a motivated and professional young adult, you can use it to forge valuable relationships that hopefully turn into great opportunities. We are lucky to have a platform that makes connecting with employers so easy and effective, it seems only fitting that we use it to its fullest capacity. Happy connecting! 

And just for the sake of practicing what I preach, here's mine: 

www.linkedin.com/pub/melanie-charyton/64/676/144/