social media profiles

How to Find Great Connections on LinkedIn

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Two people shaking hands with LinkedIn logo over them

LinkedIn serves a special purpose in the world of social media. While sites like Facebook and Instagram primarily connect you with family and friends, LinkedIn is designed to connect you with employers, coworkers, professors, and other professionals in your field. It’s important to have a good mixture in your network, but how do you make that happen? Here’s a few easy ways to get started:

Have a Stand Out Profile

Naturally, one of the most effective ways to be seen by professionals who matter is to have a great profile. Add a professional picture, organize your education and work history, and add a brief summary and headline that showcases what your specialties are. Learn more about how to do that in our post on building a great LinkedIn profile.

Join Groups

… and we’re not talking about the one for your Dr. Who fanclub! Focus on groups with people who have similar education, employment, and career backgrounds to you. A great place to start is your college’s alumni page, since you are likely to find people you know who might have some expertise or job opportunities to share. You should also join ones specific to your niche. Are you a Hudson Valley entrepreneur? Find groups on entrepreneurship and Hudson Valley businesses. Or if you’re a recent Computer Science grad, you can focus on groups working in the same field you want to, like game development or network architecture.

Connect with Employers, Coworkers, Professors, and Students in Your Field

The foundation of your LinkedIn connections should be people you’ve worked with who like and respect you, and who you like and respect in turn. These are the people who will give you positive reviews and interactions, useful feedback, and can alert you (maybe even recommend you!) for employment and engagement opportunities in the future. You can find some of your professors and fellow students by checking out the SUNY Ulster page.

Connect with Other Professionals in Your Field

This one can be a little harder, but it’s certainly not impossible! If you don’t know a professional, you may have to prove to them why they should connect with you. For someone you met at a recent conference or hiring event, you might want to acknowledge where you met and what you discussed. If the person is someone you’ve never interacted with before, but would like to, you might tell them what you enjoyed about a book they published or that you watched/attended a talk they gave. If you have mutual connections with someone, you could ask your mutual to introduce the two of you.

Now Engage!

You’ve got your connections. Great! Now comes the point of actually having them: interaction. If you’ve just connected with an interesting professional, make sure you develop a good relationship with them. Do they post useful information on their status? Be sure to like and comment if you have something to add to the conversation. Similarly, when you have something of value to share or ask, don’t hesitate to share it as a post of your own. Just make sure you keep it professional and relevant to your career!

Get Started Today

By following even a few of these tips, you should see an increase in your accepted connections and have more interaction with the ones you already have! As always, be sure to follow our LinkedIn page. If you’re not sure whether you need a LinkedIn profile or not, check out one of our blog posts that will help you decide.

How to Build a Great LinkedIn Profile

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Resume graphics with the LinkedIn logo

Now that you know why you should join LinkedIn, you may be wondering where to begin. If you’ve signed up for the site and glanced over your profile, you can see that the information you include and the layout of a profile page differs a bit from other social media sites. That said, it’s pretty simple to fill in once you know what to do with each section!

Use a Picture

As long as you have no privacy concerns, you should add a nice, professional picture of yourself to your page. The key is professional, but that doesn’t necessarily mean boring! For most careers (think business, computer science, accounting, marketing, etc.), the ideal profile picture will be a clear and well lit picture of you in business attire, but there may be leeway with some other careers. For example, someone in vet tech may have a picture in scrubs with an animal, and an artist or someone working in arts may be dressed in clothing appropriate to their work and have some filters or edits to their image.

Complete Your Introduction and About Section

The first thing people will see after your name on LinkedIn is your introduction, which includes a headline, relative location, and a summary bio. Your headline is generally what you do, but you can spruce it up by adding pertinent adjectives. If you’re between positions, say something like “Accounting Professional in Transition” or “Marketing Specialist Seeking Challenging Employment Opportunity.” Your summary “About” section should detail your history and skills, as well as what your goals are for the future. This is possibly the hardest section to write, but there are many tips and guides for what to write out there, and you can always look at your connections and others in your industry to see what people are using for this section!

Work and Education History

Naturally, one of the most important parts will be your work and education history. Design this similarly to your resume: keep details simple, and use bullet points to give added information. There is even an option to import your resume, if you want it to be identical. If you have any pictures or websites you can link to, be sure to do so. For Education, you should add any significant clubs, student government positions, honors programs, or awards you may have received, and if you did exceptionally well, you may want to add your GPA. Make sure you add SUNY Ulster to this section! In addition to the main two sections, you can also add languages, volunteer, and projects sections to better highlight your skills and accomplishments.

Skills & Endorsements

Think about what you do at your job. What can you confidently say you’re good at? Are you a videographer who knows Premiere and Vegas inside and out? Put that down. Are you a business student with team management skills? Put that down too. If you’re a writer with great editing and grammar skills, add that. Really any program, competency, or specific skill you’ve acquired can be put down here. Your connections can vouch for ones that you have put down through endorsements, so don’t hesitate to put yourself out there!

Now Make It Yours!

It’s important that your profile reflect who you are as an employee and individual, as well as what you bring to the table. Don’t hesitate to write about your skills, positions, and activities that make you unique and which you are passionate about.

How are you using your LinkedIn profile? What tips and tricks do you have for other users? Let us know in the comments!

Why You Should Be Using LinkedIn

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Cartoon heads connecting to a LinkedIn logo

You’re probably familiar with major social networking sites like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook. One other platform that you might hear about is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is possibly the most valuable of all the social networking sites when used correctly, as it focuses on something that young adults need when getting a job: connections in their industry. Whether you’re just beginning your college journey or you’re graduating this semester, you should join LinkedIn right away! Here’s just a few reasons why:

Connect with Professionals in Your Field

You may enjoy checking your friends’ stories on Instagram or catching up with far-away family members on Facebook, but in most cases that won’t be too helpful when getting jobs after graduation. That’s where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn works similarly to these “just for fun” platforms in its ability to connect, but while it could be awkward to add your boss on Facebook, on LinkedIn, that’s exactly what you SHOULD do. You see, LinkedIn gives you the chance to connect with people who can help you throughout your career, be it old or current bosses and coworkers, professors you established good relationships with, or other professionals you met through networking events in person or online. These are all people you can count on when applying for jobs, and in many cases their shared knowledge pool can help you while you’re employed, too.

Find Jobs or Internships (and Apply for Them!)

LinkedIn has a space in its site just for job seekers. In this area, you can find, view, and even apply for jobs posted on the site. It works like Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, or any one of the other job seeking sites out there, as you can search for a variety of jobs based on profession and area. If you want jobs to come to you, you can always turn on the “Let Recruiters Know You’re Open” feature.

Get Extra Info for an Interview

As every good job applicant knows, you should do some background research on an organization and your potential boss before the interview. LinkedIn gives the perfect opportunity for that! Find out more about your interviewer or future employer by visiting their LinkedIn page. LinkedIn will alert a person when you view their profile (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, they often take it as a sign you’re doing your research), but if that makes you nervous, you can always turn on Private Mode.

Keep in Touch with Your Alma Mater

After graduation, it’s easy to get caught up in everyday working life, but it’s good to see what’s going on at your old college so you don’t miss out on job fairs, networking events, and other opportunities geared toward alumni. LinkedIn will help you connect with your college as well as other alumni and students, so you can stay updated with what’s going on and meet others in your field with the same educational background. That’s important, because you never know when you could find a great job just because you went to the same college. When you make an account or update your current one, make sure you follow SUNY Ulster!

Cleaning Up Your Social Media for Graduation

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Person holding cell phone with two hands, sitting between two other people

According to the Pew Research Internet Project, approximately 74% of those with access to the internet use social media. Included in that 74% are recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers looking to get a better view of who you are as a person. Companies are becoming more interested in the whole life of their employees, either to help create company culture fits or to weed out those that may not fit from the start.

The reality is that some of those Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram posts can land you in serious hot water. Let’s remember the young woman who was fired before her first day at a pizza place because she decided to complain about it on her Twitter account. It’s your choice to share, but keep in mind you could be risking your chances of getting a new job or even keeping the position you already have.

Your social pages are basically your personal advertisements. You’re building a brand here, people!

  • Be outgoing.
  • Be yourself.
  • But be conscious.

What’s your end goal? Are you on these channels to network with desired industry insiders? Socialize? Either way, people are looking, from friends to the public. Don’t let your social media channels hold you back.

Pay close attention to these tips on what to leave off the web – for good:

Complaints About Your Current Job or Internship

This is one of the worst offenses someone can make. If you’ve had a bad day, week, or month, the last place to vent is online. Your current employer may never see your comments, but there’s always the chance a future employer will. Or worse – a fellow employee with a chip on his or her shoulder. Also, recruiters and hiring managers will look at how you present yourself online during an internship or work you currently and form an opinion about how you may act online in the future.

Also, the way you interact with your school, professors, and administration online will be watched as well. To sum it up, how you interact with people is important as it does reflect on your personality and ability to blend into community culture.

Takeaway: Save yourself the drama, and address the situation head-on in person but not online. Even if you and your manager don’t end up seeing eye-to-eye, you’ve earned their respect in the workplace.

Passive Aggressive Comments

There’s a lyric to go with every mood, person, and situation. That doesn’t mean you need to put those cryptic words on blast to your 700+ Facebook friends when someone at work crosses you. Nine times out of ten you’ll delete this post later, making it seem like you can’t handle your emotions.

Takeaway: Leave the salt for your food. Grudges can only last so long, but your social-savvy friends and coworkers will always remember the time you called them out – not so discreetly.

Inappropriate Photos and Videos

While you may have already deleted all your Facebook albums after starting to read this article, don’t forget to look at your tagged photos as well. These are often overlooked – but not by employers or recruiters. If you have public accounts, employers can use these images as a benchmark of how you’ll perform on the job. Private accounts are not as private as you think. Photos and videos can be shared, and screenshots can be made. Some very popular memes were created from private photos.

Takeaway: Snap your best foot forward. What if your Instagram was filled with such great food shots, your manager hires you to be the official ‘grammer’ of the company? Leave your options open. Keep it clean, folks!

In The End, Do You.

If you’re thinking, filters be damned – I’m posting whatever I want, whenever i want, then make your page private. Most social media platforms allow for customized privacy settings.

Our tip? Use social media, but use it wisely. Put the same efforts into your posts as you do in choosing the right Instagram filter. And if you currently have a job – don’t use social on your shift.