As much as we all love our college days, a time will soon come when we all have to leave our nest and fly as actual adults. That means that it's time for us to do all we can to get jobs.
In the past we've had to shotgun out a million resumes to different places in order to get hired, but now with the internet we have an awesome tool at our disposal.
LinkedIn is basically Facebook for the business world, and you need to be on it if you want to be hired anytime soon. Don't know how to make a profile? I'll let you know about the basics:
Start with a great first impression
Just like when you're trying to talk to that cutie sitting across the lecture hall from you, your first impression is extremely important. This means that you absolutely cannot mess up the parts of your profile people see first.
The first thing people will see is your picture. Make sure you have one (some people don't and it makes absolutely no sense to me) and that it's a professional-looking headshot.
You can also edit your professional headline, so even if you have no relevant experience please write something different than "Student at UNC Chapel Hill." It's like wearing a brown belt with a black suit, just don't do it.
Show off what you're most proud of
The meat and potatoes of your profile falls into your experience section. This will be very similar to your resume, but there are some pretty key differences.
You should include any experience you have that's relevant to the career you want, whether that comes from classes, projects, extra-curricular activities, or volunteer experience. However, when describing what you did with that, don't use bullet points like you do on a resume.
This section should read like you're writing a news article about yourself. Tell the story of your contribution and what you learned in short one or two sentence paragraphs.
Once you have all of your experience added to the page, you should write a professional summary that gives an idea of what you're passionate about and what you can offer to a potential employer. This section should be short and sweet, about two or three short (again, two sentences maximum) paragraphs.
Use your alumni network
One of the biggest strengths of LinkedIn is that you can search through UNC alumni to find real life people who are working for companies that you're interested in. Then you can take them out to coffee and talk about careers and stuff which is honestly one of my favorite things in the world.
Make sure that you say that you went to school at UNC to get access to this alumni search feature. Also, the School of Media and Journalism has their own network that you can access as well so add that one in addition to the general UNC Chapel Hill option.
Be sure to link any projects that you add to the projects section to your school as well so that people can see them easier.
Enhance your profile
So all of this will give you a pretty good profile, but you want to stand out so that you'll get hired. Here's the advanced tips for you overachievers.
LinkedIn has a lot of great opportunities to add media to your profile. A huge wall of text is pretty boring to look at, but if you have pictures to break everything up people will pay more attention to your profile and remember you more.
So, add some pictures or articles to your profile. It can be anything and doesn't have to be anything that you have taken personally, but you should have something to make it look good.
Also, once you've written drafts of your experience and your professional summary go back through it and try to sprinkle some keywords in there. Recruiters use LinkedIn search to find qualified candidates, and if you have your profile keyword optimized they'll see your profile first.
Finally, LinkedIn has a paid premium option with a lot of great features if you're really serious about finding a job. That will definitely give you a leg up over other job candidates.
So, now that you're done with your LinkedIn profile, be sure to reach out and start connecting with people. I can be your first connection — I promise I won't bite. Best of luck on the job search!
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
