Considering the excellent benefits that connecting with professionals on LinkedIn brings, college students can never ignore this social networking platform. In fact, your networking on LinkedIn should begin as early as possible. LinkedIn can help you find jobs as soon as you graduate from college.
However, it’s a regret that college students spend very little time on this professional social networking platform, as compared to the time spent on other popular social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Given below are some key tips on how college students should use LinkedIn and how they can reap maximum benefits by connecting with professionals on this social networking website.
1. Getting Job Email Alerts
Once you have created your professional profile on LinkedIn, you can set email alerts to receive notifications of recommended jobs. Students and jobseekers will be able to see the notifications on their homepage as soon as they log into their LinkedIn accounts.
2. Connecting with Professionals
If you have a look at LinkedIn, you’ll be surprised to find out the large number of professionals who choose to connect here. In fact, you can find your friends, co-workers, colleagues, classmates and family members on this platform. And it’s never a tough job connecting with them all. What’s more, you can even import your email list to find out who among your friends is present on LinkedIn.
Related: How To Build a Brilliant Professional Network in College.
3. Conducting Company Research
One of the biggest benefits LinkedIn offers college students and jobseekers is that they can check out the pages of their targeted employers. By visiting company, pages, you can conduct a research on the whereabouts of the company, the hiring process and what people have to say about that organization. This kind of company research on LinkedIn can always keep a stay ahead of your competition and increases your employability.
4. Getting Recommendations
LinkedIn also offers a feature through which you can get other people to recommend you. People with a maximum number of recommendations have a great chance of attracting the employers’ attention. College students too can try to get as many recommendations as possible to increase their employability.
Be sure to check out How to Get More LinkedIn Recommendations as well.
5. Letting Companies Find You
Today, a large number of organizations look for talented candidates on social networking platforms like LinkedIn. If you have created a good and detailed professional profile, chances are you will attract employer’s attention. And it would really be nice to be invited by companies for your job position you always wanted to occupy.
6. Connecting with Other Students
College students can also use LinkedIn to network with other students. This type of networking gives you a wonderful opportunity to find out how other college graduates found a job or got hired by an employer.
7. Landing International Jobs
Well, LinkedIn is a global networking platform. If you are interested in landing jobs overseas, you can get a lot of benefits by networking on this social media website. You can connect with all the major international employers and find jobs in foreign countries.
Conclusion
It’s about time that college students too created their profiles on LinkedIn and started to use this social media platform for connecting with professionals. If you prepare yourself as early as possible, you can easily stay ahead of your competition when it comes to landing a job of your interest.
Author: James Tomerson writes regularly on career, education and latest job trends. To read more from him, you can visit Jobdiagnosis.com, which also offers jobseekers a free career test to choose a career which is in tune with their career, aptitude and skills.
Image: Shutterstock
