Networking Wednesday: Boost Your Career with LinkedIn

Let’s face it: as college students, we are masters at using social media. We can find out anything about anyone, plan any type of event we want to, poetically express how upset we are through status updates, even run our own virtual farm, and all of this without reading a single page for our homework. Well done!  But what if we could use it to find a job?

LinkedIn has just celebrated its 12^th birthday this last December, making it older than MySpace! Employers are starting to rely more and more on it (in fact, out of 1000 recruiters, 97.3% include LinkedIn when recruiting), so it’s about time you start giving them a reason to use it!

Let’s be clear. LinkedIn is not like Facebook and Twitter, so please don’t treat it as such. LinkedIn is a website for professional people to pursue their professional interests, and to share their PROFESSIONAL qualifications! It’s a website meant to connect employers with their dream employee, and vice versa. If used incorrectly, it can devastate your job-seeking experience. If used in the right way, it can get your foot in the door quicker than ever! Spending two hours updating your profile can pay off in ways you never would image! Here are a few resources for getting your profile up and running:

Click here for a quick cheat sheet for profile building

Click here to see what College students should post

And here’s a great sample profile

If you have any questions, feel free to stop by career services in Dunford Hall!