What is LinkedIn & Why Join? LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 120 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.
Establish Your Professional Profile LinkedIn gives you the keys to controlling your online identity. Have you Googled yourself lately? You never know what may come up. LinkedIn profiles rise to the top of search results, letting you control the first impression people get when searching for you online.
Stay in Touch with Colleagues and Friends In today’s professional world, people change jobs and locations constantly. By connecting on LinkedIn, your address book will never go out of date. Your contacts update their profiles, keeping you current with their latest jobs, projects and contact info. You’ll stay in closer contact with great tools to communicate and collaborate.
Find Experts and Ideas Sometimes your immediate circle can’t resolve a unique business challenge. Tools like Answers and Groups let you locate and interact with experts through trusted introductions. LinkedIn Search lets you explore the broader network by name, title, company, location, and other keywords that will help you find the knowledge you’re looking for.
Explore Opportunities Whether you’re looking for a career opportunity, winning new clients or building your professional reputation, LinkedIn connects you to jobs, sales leads and ideal business partners. With our powerful search engine, company research tools and a jobs board that shows who you know at listed companies, LinkedIn is the place to turn for new opportunities.company, location, and other keywords that will help you find the knowledge you’re looking for.
Join our Group: Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis You can build new relationships quickly by joining shared interest groups on LinkedIn.
Share Once you’ve been accepted to the group, you can share relevant content by starting a discussion or posting a link in the share box. Sharing consistently in a group is a quick way to gain feedback on topics important to you and brand yourself as an expert in your field or industry.
Participate Be sure to check out other discussions and cast your vote by liking or commenting so the group can see the most interesting and relevant conversations. You can also see all discussions sorted chronologically or sorted by popularity.
Find Others On the members tab you can review all group members, see how closely you are connected to them, and send a message. You can also review new member or search for specific members.
Jobs Some groups feature a “Jobs” tab, where you can review jobs posted by other group members, or post a job of your own to increase distribution for the opening.
Basic Information • Display a professionally appropriate photo.
Summary (continued ) • Keep in mind to include keywords that describe your expertise. This will help recruiters, employers and potential collaborators find you when searching on LinkedIn. • Be concise & typo-free.
• Create the right headline. Be specific. Example: Experienced Transportation Executive, Visionary Entrepreneur and Investor
Experience • Include both current position and past positions. • Detail specific accomplishments in each. • Let “typeahead” find your company, so you can connect with past colleagues.
Education • If you are an alumni of the Brown School, be sure to add “Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis”. • Adding your school will authenticate your area of expertise, help you join an alumni Group & be discovered by other alums looking for talent by school.
Summary • Describe your specific expertise, your career accomplishments and professional goal. • This is part of your profile where you might some personality come out by writing in the first person or describing the aspects of your job that you are passionate about.
Email Notifications You can control the frequency of your LinkedIn update emails to help you stay in touch. Here’s how: hover your mouse over your name in the upper right hand corner. Choose “Settings” from the drop down menu. In the main screen, navigate to “Email Preferences”. From this area you can choose what type of email notices you receive and how often you receive them.
Public Profile • Under your “Public Profile”, choose a Vanity URL. Example: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleysturm • Tie your LinkedIn profile to other efforts. Add the LinkedIn URL to your email signature, business card and feature LinkedIn on your resume.
Recommendations • Think of a recommendation as a reference. Only request/write recommendations for those you would request/write a traditional reference. • Keep recommendations brief, effective and to the point.