LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world, and even if we are still studying, having a profile will make a difference. If you are unsure whether it is useful to create a profile on LinkedIn while you are still studying, the answer is yes. It can be much more useful than it seems, let's see why:
Personal Brand
We have talked several times about how important it is to have an
eTítulo and a good
personal brand for our professional future. In this globalized world where workers move and are requested internationally, any tool that serves to position or differentiate ourselves from our competitors is extremely valuable. The LinkedIn social network can help us create that personal brand from the beginning. Just starting our career, opening a profile on LinkedIn and putting it into action will ensure that we have our own identity within our field of knowledge because we can share interesting articles, new studies, and valuable content that we learn in class. LinkedIn will also allow us to link our profile to a personal blog or website where we can post our own articles (we must remember that for these tools to speak well of us and be useful professionally, it is extremely important that what we upload is well written and without spelling mistakes, so that we don't achieve the opposite of what we intended).
Networking
Having a profile on LinkedIn is not useful for making friends everywhere, those you meet on the street and don't even greet, but here the quality matters more than the quantity. Making good professional contacts in our sector as soon as possible will allow us to turn to them in the future to find that dream job or to have them write recommendation letters for us. This is what is known as
networking, and LinkedIn allows us to build a network of useful contacts for our future. We must also follow companies, not just professionals. Following companies in our sector will give us a broader view of what is being sought and where things are heading, which can guide us in choosing a specialty or complementing our studies with others.
Building a Good Reputation
On LinkedIn, it is not about posting many personal photos (even if we look very handsome) or talking about our tastes, political ideas, or anything that is not professional. Obviously, if we study Nutrition, it is logical that we post pictures of dishes, but if that is not our case, no one on this network is interested in how beautiful our cereal bowl looked this morning. That doesn't mean that our profile will be boring, quite the opposite. We are going to create a place that is interesting and that people who share our vocation want to read. Here, it is about taking care of the professional image we want to convey so that it serves us, now or in the future, to find work. It is important to remember that LinkedIn is not a job board like
Infojobs, but rather it is a job network where you don't find just any job, but only specialized and qualified jobs; that's why it is the ideal network for university students.
Only Relevant Information
To ensure that creating a profile is not a waste of time, it is crucial to keep it updated and with interesting content that provides relevant information to obtain quality contacts. It is not enough to just publish if we want to get the most out of the social network. What will make our profile stand out is that we read carefully what we are sharing and that we make a small entry with our comments. Adding an opinion based on the knowledge we have acquired, making constructive criticism, or highlighting an element of the article and justifying why we consider it noteworthy is what will give true value to our profile and make recruiters take us into account.
A Daily Job
Every day (or several days a week) we must dedicate a little time to post our articles or share current content. We must also remember to comment on and share news that is of interest, recommend the content that other people in our sector share, and search for other users to expand our professional contacts. Validating the skills of other professionals we know, engaging in respectful conversations with other people... The important thing is to keep it active and not upload anything that could harm us.
