How you use LinkedIn to take control of your professional identity

Today, it is more important than ever for students and job-seekers to market themselves digitally and via social media. LinkedIn is not only a social platform; it also plays a significant role in the recruitment process for many companies. Having an updated and active profile increases your chances of discovering by recruiters and employers if you're starting in your career. In addition, LinkedIn is where many employers look when it's time to hire a new person, so it's vital to keep your page updated and capture interest.

What is Linkedin?

LinkedIn is a social media channel aimed primarily at companies, and it's the largest network platform with over 750 million users. 

The platform is mainly for employees looking for jobs and employers to recruit new skills, but now people have opened their eyes to the potential of using Linkedin in other ways. Here, companies can build a brand, market themselves as a company and/or individual, network and find new potential customers and contacts.

Your Linkedin profile is more of a CV and personal letter than what other social media channel profiles look like as they focus more on leisure, hobbies, interests, and privacy.

In recent years, Linkedin has started courses, for example, that help you to be more visible on Linkedin so that you as an individual or entrepreneur can get tips and advice on how to make the best use of Linkedin.

How can LinkedIn be valuable for you as a student?

As a student, you are most likely already a job seeker or will be soon, depending on where in your education you are. Your profile works as a mobile CV and personal letter and allows you to control how you want to market yourself in your desired industry. By being active on LinkedIn during your education, you can build up interest and thus gain a foothold with employers and recruiters even before you graduate. Then, depending on the industry or role you want to work in, you have the opportunity to steer which employers will find you interesting.

How do you make yourself interesting?

Figure out which field you want to work in and adapt your activity and profile accordingly. Share relevant posts, write relevant articles, and network with contacts in your area of interest.

LinkedIn lets you convey your knowledge and who you are to a broad audience - to a much greater extent than just a CV and personal letter that you send in a regular application.

Below, we've summarised five quick tips on how to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile.

How to be active 

Being visible in the feed is essential to get visitors to your profile. You can be seen among other contacts than your own by liking and commenting on posts. Remember to provide comments of value and not just comment for writing something. Giving a valuable comment can create interest enough for someone to go in and check out your page or even want to make contact.

Share only posts you have a purpose to share

Feel free to share posts that you find interesting or may be of value for others to read. Keep in mind that if you are sharing a post - write a sentence or two about why the next person should read it or why you are sharing it. It shows that you are sharing it for a reason and not just to be seen in the feed.

Write an article, join groups and discuss

One way to promote yourself in addition to the above actions is to write an article. Then you can dig deeper into a topic and develop your reflections or knowledge in a specific case than if you had written a regular post. It also shows that you are ambitious and genuinely interested in what you write about.

Another way of showing your interest in a specific subject is to join groups relevant to where you can gather knowledge about desirable topics, discuss, and network.

To dig deeper -  download Zooma's free guide to learn more about using LinkedIn.

Five quick tips on how to create an attractive profile:

Already our first week at Zooma, we received good feedback and suggestions from Anders on how to optimize our profiles. So we want to share his and some of our tips on how to create an attractive profile:

1. Write a clear description of yourself.

Here you should show off your knowledge and skills. You sell yourself so adapt your profile to the jobs you want to attract in the future.

2. Honesty is the best policy!

Do not lie or exaggerate about what you can or have done. You are linked to your previous employments, and recruiters can quickly check if your information is correct.

3. Spend 15 minutes a day being active on Linkedin.

Like, comment, share, create your posts and articles.

4. Complete your profile.

Fill in and use all the functions when creating your profile page - choose a profile image background image, share your experiences, awards, certificates, or if you possess specific skills.

5. Write a short description in "About."

Write a short description of one or two sentences that arouse interest in who you are and what you do.

Take a look at our LinkedIn profiles and how we use them:

Thank you all for reading our post, and have a lovely week!

/ Gina and Sofia