Think LinkedIn is Just for Established Professionals? Think Again.

By Amanda Miller Littlejohn | Follow Amanda on Twitter @amandamogul

Every time the semesters change, I get emails, phone calls and snail mail from prospective interns and junior employees who say they want to work in PR. But invariably when I take a look at the attached resumes, I am always a bit disappointed.

To me, a resume without links to relevant online profiles seems strangely empty. A candidate without a blog? I don’t understand. No Twitter account, no LinkedIn profile? Le sigh.

Back when I sent out resumes to get my first internships and entry level jobs, I would include my apartment address and phone number at the top. But that was years ago, and it’s just not enough anymore.

I am shocked by how many students have failed to establish a professional online presence. Employers want to pre-qualify each candidate, and with the availability of online information out there, even if you don’t share your online profiles, they’re going to do a search for your name anyway to see what pops up. So why not point them in the right direction by proactively establishing a professional online presence that you can confidently include in your resume and/or cover letter?  And in the professional world, your online presence starts with LinkedIn.

You don’t have to have a job to have a LinkedIn profile. But having a LinkedIn profile can definitely help you get a job.

Here are 7 Ways Students Should be Using LinkedIn

1. Showcase Your  Internships and Volunteer Work-If you haven’t yet had an internship, begin volunteering to show that you have responsibility, motivation, drive and passion for a cause. Not too many organizations will turn down a young, hungry volunteer. Work your way up to internships in your field of study, or if you’re still figuring out what you want to do, try lots of different types of internships to get yourself out there. Once you’ve volunteered and/or interned, list that on your profile. But be sure to show how and where you added value. Did you increase efficiency, event attendance or  customer sales? If so, say it.

2. Get Recommended-Request recommendations from your Professors- Many people think that you can only get the coveted recommendations from an employer.  Not true! You can get recommendations from anyone who knows the quality of your work and can attest to your professionalism. Professors are great to do this. Who better would know whether you’re a slacker or the next big thing? Note: No one is obligated to recommend you on LinkedIn, and you may want to ask beforehand if your professor would feel comfortable recommending you. And only ask your professor if you know you’ve done a great job in the classroom.

3. Contribute Find the “Answers” section of LinkedIn and offer up a thoughtful question or a really great answer. Also check out the groups. If you’re in PR, join a few of the PR groups and contribute. Find groups of professionals in your city; join groups of non-profit  professionals or small business owners in your town. Find groups by:

• School or College-Alumni Groups (Even some high schools have alumni groups!)
• Location-where you live (Washington, DC or Philadelphia Professionals)
• Your Profession or Future Profession (i.e. PR, Marketing, Law)
• Your Desired Industry (i.e. If you want to work in Fashion PR, join a Fashion Professionals Group)

Don’t be afraid to jump in on the conversation. Sometimes students have the most valuable perspective.

4. Update, Update, Update. Update your status a few times per week. Use this space to let everyone know what you’re doing. You can also use this space to point your connections to a great article you’ve read, or better yet, to a recent article or blog post that you’ve written. Note: I’m a big advocate of students writing their own blogs.

5. Don’t Skip the Summary. Try your hand at writing an amazing bio to fit in this space. As you get more career experience and learn more about what you want to do with your career, you’ll fill this section out. But try to use up as much of the character allotment that you can. For more tips on crafting a great bio, check out How to Write a Professional Bio featuring Dan Schwabel.

6. Remember Linkedin is not Facebook. Keep the nicknames and party pictures off of there. Use a nice headshot and a professional headline. Try to keep it as serious as possible.

7. Use LinkedIn to Research Your Potential Employer.Remember, online research goes both ways! You can use LinkedIn to find out more about your future employer-who works there, who used to worked there, etc. You can find out if any of your connections are connected to those people and request an introduction. Or, you can send a direct message to someone to ask for a coffee date or informational interview.

Want to connect? Find me on LinkedIn-but be sure to mention this blog post so I’ll know how I know you My Linkedin Profile.

Bonus-Once you set up your LinkedIn profile, you can easily pull a traditional resume from it whenever you need to.

Still not convinced ? Here’s a great introductory video to LinkedIn…

Just who is using social media for college admissions? Looks like it’s not just HR managers who are perusing social media profiles. Admissions directors check candidates out on Facebook, too. But not to worry. According to Kaplan, 62% of admissions officers reported that social media profiles helped applicants get accepted, instead of hurt their chances.

Filling out grad school applications? Go ahead and send the admissions director a friend request on Linkedin. But before you do, just make sure your profile puts your very best foot forward and is completely up to date.

Courtesy of: Schools.com

Thanks for reading. If you want more social media tips and tools delivered to your inbox, sign up for my newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter @amandmogul. Toodles!

Guest Post By Joshua Waldman

Everyone is on LinkedIn these days. Let’s face it. Almost every CEO from every Fortune 500. Last count was over 50 million users.

In contrast, job boards have only about 3.5 percent of available jobs. This is common knowledge in the career industry, but then why do so many people spend so much time on job boards?

The answer is because it feels safer. LinkedIn is really all about networking. And socializing in an unfamiliar environment can be frightening. I know, I’m an introvert. I totally understand why job seekers try to spend as little time as possible in front of LinkedIn.

So I want to offer you 3 of the most common mistakes in using LinkedIn and how to avoid them. My goal is to help job seekers get over any unconscious resistance to using the most powerful job finding tool ever invented.

Mistake 1: Not Having a Brand

Shoe companies have brands, not people!

Wrong.

Looking for a job is just another sales situation. You are your product. And everything about you is going to either sell you or turn people away.

It’s really just a choice you have to make inside.

Just like how we make buying decisions emotionally, sometimes based on silly things, like the color of the packaging. So too do hiring managers unconsciously make decisions about our candidacy.

If your résumé doesn’t quite match your LinkedIn profile, and that doesn’t match what your referral said about you, then you are in big trouble.

The risk of being inconsistent is huge, and it helps to have defined “who you are” long before you put yourself out there.

The second part of branding is knowing your audience. What are their two biggest problems right now, problems that you could potentially solve?

The trick is to align the “who you are” with the “what they need” so there is a nice overlap.

This, my friends, is your personal brand. It will define your strategy, your writing style, your colors, photos and everything else about you online.

Most people crank out their LinkedIn profile without doing this step first.

Mistake 2: You are NOT Your J-o-b

“Systems Engineer”

“Marketing Executive”

“Fundraiser”

These appear under people’s names in their LinkedIn profiles. And they tell us nothing about who this person really is.

They are a commodity.

Quick story. I had a client, a network engineer, who wanted to work for a very large shoe company. No, not Nike, but good guess.

He knew they had two problems. First, they had no internal network. Second, their external network was so broken that it was affecting supply chain.

So in order to really appeal to this company, we needed to directly address their biggest challenges — challenges that he had the capacity to solve.

So his headline went like this, “Powerful Intranet builder | Supply Chain thought leader | Project management guru”

You have 120 characters to tell the world who you are and what value you bring.

And every communication you generate on LinkedIn will have this professional headline attached to it.

So choose wisely.

Hint: don’t use your job title as your headline.

Mistake 3: Don’t Look Like an Axe Murderer

Every single time I speak about social media in the job search, someone always comes up to me afterward to ask me this question, “But I’m just not that comfortable putting my picture up.” They are either too young or too old or too something.

Yes, ageism, racism and sexism are very real. It’s sad and terrible that they still happen in our society. But using a black and white photo, or zooming way out to try and hide something about ourselves is not going to solve the problem.

The only thing we can do is put some time and effort into our photos, to reflect who we are honestly. And to make a nice looking photo.

All too often, people will put up a mug shot, and wonder why they aren’t getting call backs.

This happened to a friend’s client. And the day he changed his photo, he got a job offer. No exaggeration. (I can hear the HR people cringing from this story, but it’s true).

So the lesson from this is that it is worth getting a professional headshot taken if you are serious about getting a job.

Joshua Waldman is the founder of the Career Enlightenment blog and author of “Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies”. He specializes in helping job seekers, frustrated by the traditional job search, leverage social media to find work FAST! Let him help you with your online job search.

How in the world do you get ahead and stay ahead of the social media curve? You’re using Facebook, maybe you’re on Twitter, and perhaps you’ve got a microblog on Tumblr or Posterous but other than that, how do you keep up?

James Walker, PR and social media pro over at PR Prescriptions has some thoughts.