Ria's top tips for how to use LinkedIn for career growth

Human Resource and Business Management student Ria Kumari - Assoc CIPD is currently in her final year at Aston University. She shares her top tips for how to maxamise LinkedIn for career growth. ??

As you may know, LinkedIn is a professional networking platform in a way you can say it’s professional Instagram where you can connect with your colleagues, join groups, follow professionals and companies as well as share content and explore job opportunities.

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? Start using LinkedIn

It’s important to use LinkedIn accurately if you want to be beneficial, to start with, a few things which you can add or update are:

? Profile Picture - make sure to use a professional headshot that focuses on your face, head and shoulder and wear smart casual clothes for the picture. Also, the background should be neutral so the focus stays on you. The profile picture will be your first impression on your connections, potential recruiters and employees.

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? Profile Headline - in the headline you should add your current position if you are a student make sure to add what you are majoring in and add about your career goals, keep this concise. To help increase the visibility of your profile use keywords (Make sure your account is open to everyone!).

? Summary Section - include a brief overview of your professional background, if you don’t have job experience talk about what you study and discuss key modules. Then add/relate skills to your experience. In this part, you can add any set of information that helps you to stand out from others.

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? Experience Section - List your work experience, voluntary work and placement year in reverse chronological order with job title, company name, location and dates of employment. In bullet points and keeping concise add about your key responsibilities, skills and achievements related to the specific role. In this part make sure the skills you are demonstrating are related to the job opportunities you are looking for.

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? Education Section - includes the schools, colleges and universities you have or are attending in reverse chronological order, including institute name, years of study, the subjects and grades received.

? Skills Section - add the skills you have which will help to show your strengths.

? Courses Section - if you have done any additional course that was not conducted in institutions like schools or university, you may add here the title of the course, organization name and completion date.

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? Be Careful!

Make sure to remember that LinkedIn is also a social media platform which has its own positive and negative aspects, you have to make sure to keep your personal information secure. I would suggest being careful with your personal profile and the posts you share shouldn’t contain your personal details like your home address. In cases like address, it can be sometimes tricky as if you are looking for a job they might need to know your location, in this case, I would say in the initial stage of contact do not share full address with them but only share city name. In this way, you are keeping yourself secure from any fraud but at the same time not missing any opportunities.

?LinkedIn is a professional platform, but this doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe, from my research I have seen cases where people especially students have been targets of fraud. Mainly students because they are in the stage of life where they are desperately looking for jobs, internships and placement opportunities and they are dealing with financial and mental struggles so it’s easy to be a target.

?As students we have always been told LinkedIn is a very good resource, indeed it is but never been told about fraud and as students we don’t have enough experience to understand this. If you encounter a situation where a lot of personal details are asked or you have to pay to an agency or placement/ internship opportunity please contact the careers and placement teams they will help you to make sure the opportunity is genuine.

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A few tips on fraud will be:

? If there is an opportunity and they ask you to pay you in a very short time like 8-24 hours, with only very little information about you it will not be real.

? If the message or email states “danger words” like Urgent, Exclusive, Risk-Free, Guaranteed, Limited Time Offer. I know you will feel the urgency to apply and give all the information quickly but it’s better to make sure they are genuine otherwise you can lose money or your personal details can be misused.

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? Use LinkedIn for Job Opportunities and Networking

LinkedIn is a good resource to use for job hunting and networking. It helps you to network with others (recruiters, managers, CEO’s).

?There is option in LinkedIn to add open to work in your profile which helps others to know that you are looking for a job opportunities. This helps the agencies, managers and recruiter to know that you are looking for job, if they find your profile interesting and related to a job opportunities they will contact you directly through LinkedIn to ask you if you are interested in the role and share application link or call you for first stage interview. As a student the agency knows that you are new and they help you and give tips to how to handle and approach the company that they are helping you to apply.

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If you are interested in the specific organisation or department, you can search employees doing the roles in that specific organisation and department; you can directly approach them and ask questions like how it’s working in this Human Resources and tell them what you are studying and what you want to do in future. Ask them for advice or how they got in that position. For the organisation you can approach managers or recruiter and tell them you are interested in working in this organisation, tell them why you are interested and why you will be good to hire.

Share them your CV and ask for advice it’s better to ask than regret later, you never know if you never try!

Written by Ria Kumari - Assoc CIPD