Start your online professional networking now, while you’re still a student, and you’ll be ahead of the job search game for a very long time!
Yes, I know you have a very active Facebook account, and you have all your friends around you in class or the dorm and everywhere you are at school. But, you’ll be leaving them all soon, when you graduate. You’ll want to find a job, and you’ll want to help your friends find jobs, too.
So, Start NOW While You’re Still Seeing Everyone Regularly!
Even if you don’t graduate for 6 months or 2 years, lay the foundation for your life-long network and your job search using LinkedIn in ways that Facebook and Twitter can’t do for you. LinkedIn is the favorite place of recruiters right now, and is apt to be for several years into the future.
LinkedIn is more important to your career and to your job search right now than Monster or CareerBuilder.
Think: personal marketing, personal branding, and staying in touch with people you know and like. All of those motivations will help you in the future making your career more successful.
You have 3 goals:
1.) Start building the network of people with whom you are connected. The larger the network of people you connect with on LinkedIn, the more effective it can be.
2.) Start building out your resume by collecting and documenting accomplishments in your Profile.
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3.) Start collecting recommendations from both your school faculty and staff as well as those with whom you work in internships.
How to accomplish those goals
Because it takes a while to develop an effective LinkedIn network, start now:
- Establish your LinkedIn Profile and encourage all your friends to do the same thing.
- Connect with your school friends now, while you see them frequently and it’s easy to ask. In the years ahead, you may lose track of each other, so connect now when you can find them easily.
- Ask your favorite, and/or most famous and influential, professors and school staff members for LinkedIn recommendations. This makes it very easy for recruiters and potential employers to get an idea of who you are and how you work. Connect with them, too.
- If you’ve had internships, ask your boss and/or co-workers at your internships for LinkedIn recommendations, too. Keep track of your accomplishments (not just “responsible for…”), and add the accomplishments to your Profile. This helps recruiters get a better understanding of what experience you have and how you have done in work environments.
- Connect with your professors and school staff as well as the people where you have your internships.
- Join appropriate LinkedIn Groups. There are groups for job hunting, college/university alumni groups, and professional groups for whatever profession you want. LinkedIn Groups are very helpful for:
- Participating in Group Discussions
- Joining Sub-Groups, like a new-grad job-hunters Sub-Group in an accountants (or whatever) Group to find people with even more in common with you
- Monitoring the job postings
- If you see an unfilled need, asking a Group owner if you can start a new Sub-Group of their Group, like for new-grad job-hunters
- Start a new Group if you don’t see an appropriate one.
- Monitor the questions in the Answers section (drop-down under “More” in the top nav).
Be sure to act like a grown-up.
Bottom Line
LinkedIn offers much, MUCH more for job search, and my colleague Jason Alba is an expert on using LinkedIn for job search. Get more information from Jason’s blog, Imonlinkedinnowwhat.com and his book, I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?
About the author…
Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg.
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[...] Career Jump Start for College Students – before graduation is the best time for college students to get a jump-start on their career networks, the newest blog post by Susan P. Joyce, Job-Hunt’s Online Job Search Expert. [...]