What if I tell you that the dream company that you wish to enter in might someday reach out to you directly asking if you would be interested to work with them
Would you believe me?
Well this happened with my childhood friend Mrinali whom I helped optimize and build her Linkedin profile. Guess What?
Few months down the lane, she ended up getting messages from the hiring managers of Google and Goldman Sachs
BOOOOOMMMM!!!! BEST MOMENT OF HER LIFEEEEEE
Less than 10% of the students leverage Linkedin to their advantage and hence it was easy for Mrinali to build her authority on Linkedin and crack through the competition that is there in her domain space
Infact among the 10% of the, most of them start using Linkedin only after they witness placement or internship season looming over their heads. Rest most of the students endlessly depend on the careers team or the placement cell
Not only Mrinali, but many of the students from NIT Nagpur, Manipal, VIT, London School Of Economics, Imperial College London, Birmingham University, Cranfield University and employees from Oracle, Honda, Union Bank Of Switzerland that I’ve helped in the past have observed similar results just by focussing more on their Linkedin game
Let’s now delve deeper into different aspects of the Linkedin game and understand how you can leverage these strategies to elevate your profile and standout from the crowd
Table of Contents
STEP 1 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Creating an impactful profile picture and cover image
Imagine a recruiter/professional visits your Linkedin profile and they end up seeing your summer vacation picture on the beaches of Barcelona as your Linkedin profile picture.
Damnnnn!! What a great start yaaa
If I was that recruiter, I’m sorry but I would have judged you very hard!
Linkedin is a professional and serious space and if you wish to work with professional companies, you need to portray yourself as a professional applicant
Trust me anything other than a professional headshot for your Linkedin profile picture is a NO NO!
Similarly, your cover image occupies such a massive real estate on your profile that keeping it blank or posting an unrelated picture is a massive turnoff.
Make sure to keep your basic profile logistics clean, tidy and professional
STEP 2 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Optimizing your headline to make your profile searchable
I bet you didn’t know that the reason behind an good headline is to make your profile searchable
Imagine that you are a software developer and there’s a recruiter who wishes to hire software development folks for her company.
She goes on Linkedin, searches for software developers but oppps, your profile doesn’t show up in her search feed
BUT WHY BRO? I’M A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, I SHOULD POP IN HER SEARCH FEED RIGHT?
I understand your pain but it’s mostly because you didn’t optimize your headline and overall profile for the keyword “software developer.”
And you missed the chance of being noticed by the hiring manager.
Optimizing your profile and headlines for a specific keyword is an art and in order to get noticed by the hiring managers/founders/professionals, you need to master that art
STEP 3 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Crafting an engaging about section
Your about section is like your personal billboard that champions your credibility, skills and achievements in the eyes of recruiters/founders/professionals
You must draft your about section strategically
WOAH WHAT? BRO WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “STRATEGICALLY”
In simple terms, your about section tells the viewer about everything about you with regards to your experience, skills, achievements yada yada yada
BUT
As mentioned above, it also helps in making your profile searchable
Suppose you want are looking for career opportunities in the domain of “Software Development”
You need to make sure that the keyword “Software Development” is evenly sprinkled across your profile
This means not only in the headline but also in the about section, the content that you post and in your connection list.
We’ll discuss the content and connections part later
Therefore, simply crafting the about section won’t really make sense until you do it “strategically”, i.e, drafting your story with regards to achievements, skills, experience but also making sure that you sprinkle your keywords in the about section
STEP 4 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Expanding your network
Now that you have a Linkedin profile with the perfect profile and cover image along with optimized headline and about section.
It’s time to now expand your network and add connections in your lists
Sending connection requests is pretty much similar to sending friend requests on Facebook.
They accept your connection request and then both of you are added to each other’s connection lists. You both can now witness and engage each with other’s content along with some additional features
Now, whom should you send connection requests?
Again you need to be quite strategic about it BECAUSE you can add only 30,000 people in your connection – THAT’S ALL!!
Now since you have a limit, you need to make sure that you only add people who are relevant to your profile and are active on Linkedin
Again suppose that you want to land a job/internship in the domain of software development, you have to make sure that you add folks from the software development domain.
They either might be software development enthusiasts, existing employees at a software development company or hiring managers looking for software developers.
Adding digital marketers to your connection lists won’t make any sense
Until that digital marketer happens to a founder or a decision maker
Hence, keeping in mind that there happens to be a cap at the number of connections that you could possibly have in your list, you need to make sure that they are relevant to your profession.
STEP 5 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Showcasing your expertise
Now that you have optimized your profile and have sorted out the basic logistics and hygiene for your Linkedin profile
Here’s comes the most important part of your Linkedin game
SHOWCASING YOUR EXPERTISE
This basically means creating authority via your profile so that people trust you and look up to you for any assistance / updates
The only way you do that isssssss…………. POSTING CONTENT
Posting content relevant to your niche is the most powerful ways to build credibility and authority in your niche
If you are someone who doesn’t have an idea about what really to post on Linkedin, start following people who are thought leaders in your domain.
See what it is that they post regularly and see what kind of response they get. Once you have mapped out what works and what doesn’t
You need to then create similar pieces of content buckets and start posting on the platform. You can get their audience by also commenting and engaging with their posts to divert traffic on your page
STEP 6 of Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Students : Leveraging cold emailing
While Linkedin can certainly help you crack a lot of opportunities. Something that can further increase your chances of success coupled with Linkedin is cold emailing
Cold emailing with the art of shooting emails to people who might end up helping you. They may or may not know you but the intent of the cold email is definitely to get help from the prospect
While a lot of cold emails go unanswered, one thing that can seriously propel your chances of success is adding a linkedin profile link in the email.
By embedding your Linkedin profile link, you give the person an opportunity to visit your profile and know you better in terms of the way you have optimize your profile
With this, the chances of getting a reply on your email increases. But for this step to materialize, you should have already optimized your profile to get results
If your profile is dead or inactive and then you embed your profile link in the email, this might end up being counterproductive
Final Thoughts
One thing that really upsets me is that none of the universities in the world teach students how to use Linkedin to their advantage. Students spend endless time studying and upskilling but none of them are mentored to simultaneously focus on building their personal brands on Linkedin.
This is one of the reasons why Linkedin happens to be a very underrated platform. Very few are aware of the hidden potential of this platform.
But this is also an advantage for the folks who are looking forward to starting their journeys on Linkedin. Imagine planning to build your personal brand on youtube, Instagram or Facebook
It’s super difficult considering the level of competition these platforms have. But, if you put similar efforts on Linkedin, getting results on this platform is quite simple.
Now is the time that you start to take Linkedin seriously. It was be a massive game changer for you.
I hope these blogs add massive value and knowledge to your existing skillset with regards to how can one use leverage linkedin in their favour