If you will be moving into a career in tech, it is recommended that you create a LinkedIn profile as soon as possible. Along with a Github page, LinkedIn will be a way for future employers and colleagues (past and future) to connect with you and allow you to have a controlled online presence for your professional experience.
Why should you use LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is your professional life
It contains your online résumé and professional history
You can build your brand
It helps you get noticed by your future boss and recruiters.
Having endorsements for skills is helpful.
It's helpful to get Recommendations on your LinkedIn profile from people that you have worked with. It is an easy feature to use and similar to asking for a reference but potentially quicker and remains associated with your work history.
It helps with Job Search/Interviewing
9 out of 10 Company recruiters use LinkedIn.
75% of hiring managers look at profiles to learn about candidates.
LinkedIn has its own job search feature / database. LinkedIn Help Page on Job Searching
You can follow companies and industry professionals.
See Using a Company's Profile On Linked in below
As you can tell from this chart, employers look at your LinkedIn accounts to evaluate whether you are a fit for their company or not.
As the chart illustrates, it is a combination of these five elements:
Photo
Headline
Summary
Completeness
Connections
There are proven benefits of including a photo on your LinkedIn profile. Users with a profile photo get:
9x more connection requests
21 x more Profile views
36 x more messages
For your photo, you do not need to look like a movie star, but you need to look professional. If you are not confident in taking a picture of yourself or if you feel you do not take great photos of yourself, I would recommend asking a friend or colleague, or contacting someone in the photography club at your school to see if they are willing to help you out.
The headline and summary should include what you are looking for as well as what you have accomplished so far. Be sure to be clear and concise.
Completeness refers to having all the relevant information on your LinkedIn page, which includes your work history, education, photo, GitHub link, etc.
Connections are important. Make sure to connect with friends and friends of friends, and do connect with CUNY and your college; you never know when an opportunity will float your way.
Listing Your Work Experience
Your work experience gives recruiters and employers a clear idea of what you have achieved up to this point in your career. Listing your work experience seems like a no-brainer, but it helps to know that profiles that list two or more previous positions are up to 36 times more likely to be found by recruiters. Therefore, detailing every single internship, part-time job, and summer job will be to your benefit. You should treat the tone of this section like your résumé. Our résumé helper page can help you in terms of how to denote your work experience.
Volunteer experience is a definite plus, as 41% of hiring managers consider volunteer experience equally as valuable as paid work experience
Skills
Skills are as important as anything else on your profile. Listing 5 or more skills will net you 17 times more profile views. This applies to skills that you have gained from school or your previous work experience. List skills that you are ultimately confident about, and as with your résumé, it always helps to embellish your skills within reason.
Education
Since your education is the foundation of your career, it is a key aspect of your LinkedIn profile. People who list a school on their profile get 10 times more views on average. It also helps to add any participation or leadership in university clubs and honors you have earned thus far. Putting your expected graduation date on your profile allows employers to align you with positions past that time or internships prior. Our résumé helper page can show you how to denote your education on LinkedIn.
Using LinkedIn to Help with Your Job Search and Interviews
LinkedIn is a valuable resource to help you find jobs and even make your interview process easier:
For the most basic example of this, you can follow the job boards of companies you want to work and see what news they post. See section on "Company Profiles."
- It is effective to contact the recruitment staff from companies you are interested in. Their job is to find people suitable for the company's open positions. Therefore, messaging recruiters (especially campus recruiters) can be a worthwhile way to network and reach out to companies.
Your alumni connections come in handy as well. Find fellow alums that are working at companies you want to be a part of. Reach out to see if they are willing to talk to alumni / future grads like yourself. See section on connecting to Alumni.
- As you attend meetups, hackathons, and panels, having your LinkedIn set up is great (app download if possible) to connect with people you meet quickly. Adding a note like "Would love to connect, met you at" is very helpful. This is also why having a photo is helpful. It allows your connections (and you) to put a name to a face.
- Finally, you can find the people you will be meeting with for an interview to see their backgrounds and what content they share on LinkedIn.
Engineering managers often post about open positions on LinkedIn. So in
the search field, under "job title," put "engineering manager,"
"engineering sr developer," etc.
- Look at many people in the list returned
- Look at their "activity–" their posts
- Search for posts announcing which teams are hiring
- Try connecting with people on teams that are hiring
- Ask for an informational interview to learn about the person, the role, the team, the company.
- Gear the informational interview toward learning about the person's
experience in the company.
- Try to learn about what they are doing. Bring
up common interests.
- Be aggressive in searching. Search for each team member, let them know you applied.
- Ask engineering managers what makes candidates stand out in the interview process.
Alumni Connections
A significantly useful aspect of representing your education on LinkedIn is establishing connections with fellow alumni. It is also helpful to encourage your fellow students to use LinkedIn. The people you meet may be a connection you lean on later for advice, career opportunities, and knowledge.
Feel free to join the Hunter Alumni in Tech LinkedIn Page https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8846785/
How to find alumni on LinkedIn
- Sign into your LinkedIn account
- In the search bar at the top, type in Hunter College and click on the page (should be the first suggestion that comes up after typing Hunter College)
- Click on "see alumni"
- Click on the bars under the categories (Where They Live, Where They Work, What They Do) to filter for what you're looking for. For example, you might choose "Greater New York City area" under Where They Live and "Information Technology" under What They Do.
- You can also filter by other categories by clicking on the Next button above the category listings. Importantly, you can filter by What They Studied and choose "computer science."
Scroll down to see a list of alumni. You can also see if you have any connections in common with them.
Click on their pictures to view their profiles.
When you find someone you would like to speak with, send them a request to Connect, ideally with a note saying you are a student at Hunter in computer science and would like to learn more about what they do.
Here is another path to finding alumni
Click on search bar in LinkedIn
Choose "people" from dropdown
Click "All filters"
- Choose whatever combination of search terms makes sense to you, click Apply.
Using Companies' Profiles to Your Benefit
There are more extensive ways to take advantage of company pages on LinkedIn:
Go to the company's page on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/ (for example)
You will see the option to "Follow" them.
On the left hand side you will see "Jobs" if you click there, then see more, you will have options to manage seeing jobs at that company.
You will see any connections you have to that company
These could be people you know directly "Name works here"
There will also be a number for Hunter Alumni "# of people from your school were hired here"
If you do not have any connections at the company, click on "See all # of employers here"
Your 2nd and 3rd connections will show up first.
2nd connection means you are one person away from that individual.
3rd connection means you are two people away from that individual.
Full list of our Job Search and Interview Information
You can find a full list of all the pages on the Handbook here.....
