Professional online presence

• There are many reasons why having a professional online presence is advisable, the most important being that it gets your name out there. You can seem like a more serious candidate than others if you have a Linkedin and other applicants don’t, and may give you a lead. It is good to be seen as a legitimate businessperson and not just a student/graduate, and this is the platform for businesspeople to come together and network.
• There are some pretty scary claims out there about the correlation between an individuals’ online presence and their likelihood to be denied for a job – allegedly, more than a third of employers in the UK have rejected a candidate because they’ve seen something on the candidate’s social media profiles that doesn’t please them (yikes). Having a fully filled in LinkedIn can help keep people from nosing around your Facebook profile, they simply won’t have the reason to waste their time!
  • You can read our blog post about how social media can hurt your job search here.

Scope

• Being an online resume, you are able to be seen by professionals across the globe without doing anything. If you select those in your network well, and connect with relevant professionals for what you’re looking to get into (i.e. influencers in your field of interest, professionals within the industry, internal recruiters for organisations that you’re interested in, etc.), then your profile will start to bounce around people’s suggested connections. You will find that people outside of your network are coming across your profile and can reach out to with things that you may be interested in.

Recommendations/endorsements

• Everyone’s personal LinkedIn page has a section where you can have others leave a review-style comment about you. This is a great way to reinforce what you claim to be on your CV, or in your personal profile, and adds credibility to your professional standing. This creates legitimacy to your experience and there is no way to get this kind of impression across without this profile element.

Keeping up-to-date with company and industry news

• If you are currently a student, and are really eager to get into the sales industry when you graduate, it can be extremely helpful in your job search to be aware of the trends and industry news. You can refer back to these occurrences in an interview, which will give you an added depth of knowledge.

Groups

• There are groups for pretty much every speciality out there, for professionals to interact with one and other, share knowledge, make connections and generate new business opportunities. This is especially useful for graduates (or soon to be grads) as you’ll be able to see articles, updates and potential opportunities that may be perfect for you. These are the kinds of things that are specific to your interests, and therefore can be much more relevant to you than other posts on the web.

Tips:

• Quality over quantity – as with a CV, be concise but informative. People will be quickly bored by heaps of information in big paragraphs, so keep it short and sweet!
• Add relevant extracurricular activities and interests – do you participate in sports? This doesn’t just show physical fitness, it demonstrates desirable qualities like discipline, competitiveness and teamwork. If you were a team captain too, make sure that’s on there – leadership skills and the ability to take on a role of responsibility are excellent traits.
• Get specific – facts and figures help to reinforce your credibility and desirability, so if you graduated with a 2:1, include it in your profile.
• Reply to messages – you may recieve messages from recruiters about roles you have no interest in, and it can be frustrating because your profile may clearly state what you’re looking for. Reply not only because it is polite, but also because you can clarify what you are looking for, and the contact may come in handy further down the line (Recruiters know a lot of people in a variety of industries, they may have a connection that could be useful to you).

Think of it as personal branding; it is your chance to show your professional side, and create an identity that you actually want to come up when a potential employer googles you. If the only thing that comes up when your name is searched online is your Facebook page, which is covered in pictures of you on nights out at uni, hiring managers may not form the best perception of you (no matter how good your experience may be).

Hopefully you found this article useful, and we hope it has convinced you that LinkedIn is a tool and not a burden. If you are looking for any more tips about job searching and interviewing, check out our other posts. If you are looking for a graduate position for the summer, do get in touch with one of our consultants via 0203 700 8483!