Posted by By: Sumaita Mahmood
Hi everyone! My name is Sumaita, and I am a Wasserman Career Ambassador in my senior year studying Global Public Health and Chemistry. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Diversity Internship and Career Program (DICP) event, Raise York LinkedIn Profile to All-Star by SiriusXM. As someone who currently relies on LinkedIn for job search after college, I got to pick up some neat tips from the two wonderful speakers, Allison Smith and Christine Schworn, from SiriusXM.
Allison started off the event by taking us through a quick and thorough rundown of LinkedIn. She began emphasizing that people should use LinkedIn the same way we use other social networking sites, which means checking our feeds and following companies. By liking and sharing posts or creating great notifications about your own experiences, you are able to enter the virtual networking experience with ease. LinkedIn has made the user experience easier for this type of networking. You never know if your interest in a company online could further lead to landing a job there in the future.
Shifting gears to our profiles on LinkedIn, Allison emphasized that there should at least be a picture of yourself, a description of your current position, and whether or not you are actively looking for opportunities. These three aspects form the majority of what other people will see when searching for connections on LinkedIn. Allison also mentioned to carefully ponder your listed location because companies can search for candidates for positions by location. That said, it would help to list your home state if you are interested to returning there for future opportunities.
Another section that Allison placed a lot of emphasis on was the skills section because these keywords are part of LinkedIn’s algorithm that helps job recruiters search for potential candidates. While endorsements are not required, it certainly helps the job process by having your skills endorsed by former colleagues and employers. Even taking the extra step to collect recommendations on LinkedIn is a nice touch to your profile that further helps recruiters.
During Christine’s half of the presentation, we got to learn more about how to use LinkedIn for job searching itself and we were given a glimpse into how LinkedIn looks for a recruiter. An easy way to show a recruiter you are interested in a company is by indicating them in your interests section on your profile. You can also join groups that allow you to meet people who work there and have similar interests to yours. Furthermore, you can use your education to your advantage by going to your university’s alumni group and connecting with alumni who work at the company.
Christine expressed how companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars on recruitment through LinkedIn. We were walked through the various filters that recruiters can use to search for keywords, which emphasized the importance of having those keywords in your personal LinkedIn profile. If a profile does not have keywords that recruiters recognize, it is a red flag to them and suggests that the candidate is not a great fit for the position. Some settings on your profile such as setting it to show that you are open to work attracts recruiters to your profile. They can also see if you have applied in the past, file people into folders using the filters available to them, and more. Therefore, it is important to curtail your profile so that you get placed in the correct folder.
The key takeaway from this event is that the power of LinkedIn lies in the number of connections you have, but these connections should be meaningful ones from your experiences. With the right intention and keywords, your job search dreams can come true. This event showed that DICP workshops are surely not to be missed!
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