Leveraging Social Media Profiles to Further Your Career: Part 1 – LinkedIn

Social media is an extremely power medium. Leveraging it properly can be the key to landing a new job or making the right connections to make a big impact at your current job. Your internet presence is most likely in full view of the curious public. If you are job hunting or actively networking your profiles online are extremely easy to find. What does your profile say about you? Many people are now racing for the privacy settings and locking down their profiles to interested outsiders. Instead you should learn to leverage your profile to help you stand out from a crowd. Today we are taking a look at LinkedIn.

• Always keep your profile up to date:
  At least once every 3–4 months you should update your LinkedIn Profile, and certainly every time you receive an award or community recognition for a volunteer project, start a new position, or earn an educational achievement. Use your space wisely. When talking about job experience don’t take the lazy way out and just copy your resume or CV.  Use the Experience section to really showcase your previous employers, roles, and most importantly the key achievements and impact you had in that company.
  
  
• Participate in group discussions:
  Do you have a something in your field you are passionate about? Participate in group conversations. The more you participate, the more you’ll build credibility and trust within your industry and specialty. This is your opportunity to become a thought leader. Engage your peers and there is the possibility of gaining a following.
  
  
• Fill out your skills section:
  Now that your skills can be endorsed by people in your network there is no reason why you shouldn’t be beefing up that part of your profile. Those keywords are important for recruiters and hiring managers searching for candidates for positions and will also help your rankings in Google searches as well (or Bing if you are into that). Anything you can do to more completely fill out your profile or come up more frequently in searches will help position you for your future.

LinkedIn is probably the most important for branding by social media profile and tool to leverage when it comes to your career. Keep watching the blog for the next installment in this series as we take a look at the other common social media profiles you may have and how you can leverage them in your career.