Creating Your Professional Story With LinkedIn

Editor's Notes

• #5: Instead of just jumping in and trying to figure it out, I wanted to direct you to the LinkedIn Learning Center as the ideal place to start or improve your experience on LinkedIn. BRING IT UP ON SCREEN. The Learning Center equips you with everything you need to know to understand the basic features of LinkedIn, set up a profile, and tailor it to your needs. Let me demonstrate a few things…and talk about how to use the new user as well as the student guides.Does anyone have any questions so far? Has anyone ever been here before?
• #6: As you begin, your profile could look very much like this. You likely don’t have many details in your profile, haven’t joined a large number of groups, and don’t have a picture yet. This is OK, really, and there are many opportunities to complete your profile more fully. Let me go ahead and pass out this handout on what makes a good profile. Even if you’re experienced, it doesn’t hurt to grab one.Has anyone done all 5 of these tips?As you create your profile, you can import content from your resume. But I challenge you to create something new here-something fresh and engaging, like you were discussing your career interests with a person you met at an event. Remember, there’s no need to set a World Record for speed in completing a LinkedIn profile. Just like it probably took you a while to create a resume, it will also take some time to gather all of your experiences here.
• #7: Here is an example of a completed student profile. What Eric has going for him is that he’s maximized his available space to discuss his diverse activities, and used the summary space to create an angle of how he wanted viewers to perceive him. He’s also done a nice job of illustrating his specific experiences and skills-more to come with that.
• #10: This is a screenshot showing you one of the things I just mentioned-where you can import your email address book, or search for people individually via email.
• #11: Here’s a screenshot of my own LinkedIn Alumni page, showing my alumni network from Bowling Green State University. I can sort by each blue bar that you see here, and continue to add additional criteria, narrowing it down to even criteria from each column.
• #15: LinkedIn offers some highly specific additional profile sections that are a great help for students. Don’t rush past these sections, as it offers an opportunity for you to talk about the things that matter to you-whether or not you got paid for them, or were in a leadership role, or for any other reason that might hold you back. Don’t force yourself to use all of these categories, but most students should be able to make use of the courses, projects, and organizations section. Here’s another example of what this looks like:
• #16: How many people in this room have volunteered through Madison House? Why let that time go to waste, professionally speaking? The volunteer experience and causes not only lets you display what you have done, but also lets you display the causes you’re interested in that you haven’t necessarily volunteered with.
• #17: Skills are another area that allows you to be unique. Choose about 10 relevant skills-you dramatically improve your ability to be found by prospective employers and other contacts, as well as continue to craft your own unique story of your experiences.
• #18: How do you choose skills? Mouse over the “more” menu option, and choose skills. Enter most anything you can think of-LinkedIn very likely tracks it already, but you can create your own also. With the skills that LinkedIn tracks, you can examine how popular the skill is, and its trend over time. Choosing skills wisely allows you to reinforce the professional message that you are already communicating through your resume.