March 31, 2016

Linkedin Howto A Tutorial for Recent Graduates

Ian Smith

Ziyue Wang

Joshua Schmidt

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Table of Contents Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4

Go to Linkedin and Sign up ............................................................................................................. 4

Set up your Profile .......................................................................................................................... 4

Write your name: ........................................................................................................................ 5

Write your summary ................................................................................................................... 5

Add your Work Experience ......................................................................................................... 6

Add your Education ..................................................................................................................... 8

Add Certifications ........................................................................................................................ 9

Add Your Interests ....................................................................................................................... 9

Groups and Influencers ............................................................................................................... 9

Connections .................................................................................................................................... 9

Advanced Linkedin Features ......................................................................................................... 10

Skills and Endorsements............................................................................................................ 11

How will the endorsement feature benefit me? ................................................................... 11

How could I use it? ................................................................................................................ 12

How does the endorsement work? ....................................................................................... 13

How do I manage the endorsement? .................................................................................... 13

Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 14

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Table of Figures Figure 1: Account Creation Form .................................................................................................... 4 Figure 2: Title Block ......................................................................................................................... 5 Figure 3: Personal Summary ........................................................................................................... 6 Figure 4: Work Experience .............................................................................................................. 7 Figure 5: Education ......................................................................................................................... 8 Figure 6: Skills List ......................................................................................................................... 11 Figure 7: Edit Skills ........................................................................................................................ 12 Figure 8: Endorsement Suggestions ............................................................................................. 13 Figure 9 Recommendation Request ............................................................................................. 15 Figure 10: Recommendation Request Form ................................................................................. 16

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Introduction Linkedin is a powerful online portfolio and professional profile that users can use to put together a portfolio or profile to attract one or more of the many employers that currently use LinkedIn. The goal of this tutorial is to help recent university graduates to learn to effectively use LinkedIn both as an online portfolio as proof of their skills and expertise and as a way to connect with people that can help in the job hunt.

Go to Linkedin and Sign up First, go to http://www.Linkedin.ca. If you don’t already have an account, you will have to fill in the form shown in Figure 1 to create a LinkedIn account.

Once you submit the form you should quickly receive an email from Linkedin to confirm the creation of your account. Linkedin will quickly ask you to give it permission to go through your contacts and try to connect with any of your contacts already using Linkedin, or to invite them to create a Linkedin account. We recommend putting your profile together first before finding connections or giving Linkedin permission to attempt to recruit them using your name. If you try to connect with someone that doesn’t recognize your profile they will most likely refuse your request to connect. Linkedin may not allow you to send another request.

Once you’ve created your account you can begin setting up your profile.

Set up your Profile To set up your profile first look for the Profile item in the toolbar near the top-left corner of the webpage, hover over it with your mouse and select Edit Profile. We recommend that you put

Figure 1: Account Creation Form

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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together your profile in order of priority. Your personal summary, education, and work experience are of the greatest importance so they will be the first thing you put together.

Write your name: Start by writing your name at the very top of your profile, it should resemble Figure 2. After you do that you should give yourself a job title. If you are a student, write Student; otherwise, write

a job title you held previously, or leave it blank.

The rest of the information in this area will be filled automatically as you complete your profile. You will also notice that there is a web address for your profile in this section; if you want to refer someone to your profile, this is the link you

should supply them with.

You may also choose to add your contact info. If your other social media accounts are for personal use they should not be supplied on your profile.

Write your summary Your summary should be no more than a few paragraphs. Mention your level of education, work experience, volunteer experience, and interests briefly. They will be expanded upon in other areas of your profile. Concentrate on what differentiates you from others and what would make you appear to be a qualified applicant. If you like you can also supply a copy of your current resume in this section, and links to any websites where employers can see your work.

If you are a Computer Science student and have made use of GitHub for your projects consider linking your GitHub account to your Linkedin profile, as in Figure 4 so that employers can see

Figure 2: Title Block

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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examples of your work so they can more accurately gauge your expertise.

Add your Work Experience Next, add your work experience. Add the places you have worked and your job titles in order of the most recent to the least. It is best to leave out anything you would not be willing to do again or talk about, or if you don’t think they’d provide a good reference.

When adding your job description or responsibilities be sure to be brief and use action words. For example, do not use full sentences like “I taught children of various ages, skill levels, and preferences for learning to swim using the Red Cross Program”. Instead write “Taught children of various ages, skill levels, and preferences for learning to swim using the Red Cross Program”.

We recommend adding your volunteer experience in this section due to one of LinkedIn’s idiosyncrasies, Linkedin allows you to add connections based on shared work experience, but not shared volunteer experience. Figure 4 is an example of how you can put together this section of your profile. References from your volunteer work can be invaluable in the application process, they can attest to your work ethic like any employer, and they might have a better sense of your values and personality.

Figure 3: Personal Summary

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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Figure 4: Work Experience

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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Add your Education

Start with your bachelor’s degree. Add the school, degree program, and the years you spent there, as shown in Figure 5. You can also add any organizations you worked with or volunteered for where it says Activities and Societies.

This is a good time to start adding awards, projects, and courses that you would like associated with your education. These are located in other sections of your profile, but are linked to other sections of your portfolio. Projects must be hosted on an external website. Add awards that you are proud of or think employers would appreciate. Don’t add every single course you took, rather focus on the most recent and important ones for your field.

If you are particularly proud of your High School experience, or you have connections you want to add from your High School, you can add it briefly. However, most employers will not care about your High School education. You should be focussing on what sets you apart from everyone else when putting together an online profile or portfolio.

Figure 5: Education

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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Add Certifications If you have certificates for courses you have taken for work or school you can add them too. For example, you might want to add your first aid certificate if it is current, and especially if you want to use it in your next vocation.

Add Your Interests Your interests are a simple list of things you do or pay attention to in your spare time. You can add sports you participate in, collections you have, or podcasts you listen to, etc. These help employers to understand you a little better as a person, so be honest. You wouldn’t want to be forced to chit-chat with your employer about something you only pretended to be interested in.

Groups and Influencers Linkedin also has a number or people and companies that you can associate with your profile. These people and companies will show up on your home page and will be visible at the bottom of your profile. Add the ones you might like to work for, or the ones you simply want to learn a little more about.

Connections Once you have put a fair bit of work into your profile and have your work experience, volunteer experience, skills, and education, it is time to connect with your friends, coworkers, or other people you would want endorsing your skills and speaking on your behalf.

Linkedin offers a tool where you give it your email address and it looks through to find people that already have Linkedin profiles. You can send these people a connection request. Otherwise you will have to search for people by name, or for people that worked at companies you worked for, were educated where you were, or through other avenues. Linkedin is very picky about the people it will let you send connection requests to. If it doesn’t see how you could know someone it will be reluctant to let you send a connection request. This is another reason to be thorough when creating your profile.

Sometimes people you have never met or heard of will attempt to connect with you. If you feel they would be of help to you, accept the connection request. Linkedin suggests you limit your connections to people that would be able to speak on your behalf, and people you have never met are not in a position to do this.

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Advanced Linkedin Features LinkedIn is website for graduating students looking for their first job. While there are a lot of helpful tools for making your profile, some of the more advanced features are not as well explained as they should be. This tutorial will cover Endorsements and Recommendations, which are particularly special on LinkedIn. Endorsements and Recommendations can be some of the most powerful parts of a young graduate's profile when done well.

These advanced features are important for several reasons: • Resumes are strong tools for job searching, but have some limitations because it's

easy to write something about yourself • Recommendations and references allow other people to vouch for your talents, skills

and personality • LinkedIn allows you to state what your own strengths are, but without a third-party

to verify, it is hard to know how accurate this is; this is why LinkedIn allows other people to “endorse” your skills and give credibility to your claims

• LinkedIn also forces you to be honest with yourself about what specific skills you have

• Important to combat the urge to be a “generalist”, saying you are good at everything

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Skills and Endorsements Endorsements are a Linkedin feature that allows users to verify other people’s skills and have others verify their own. This tutorial will help you to understand what you can get from the endorsement feature, and how to use it. Figure 6 shows what the Skills section of a Linkedin portfolio can look like, the number of endorsements, and the identity of the endorsers are clearly visible.

Figure 6: Skills List

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

How will the endorsement feature benefit me? The endorsement feature can help employers to easily find people with a specific skill, and verify the skill level of the person. Before a company can hire someone the company must know what skills their potential employee has. By using the enforcement feature, the information of your skills is posted on your LinkedIn profile, and other people can verify your skills and recommend you to companies and institutions.

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How could I use it? When you editing your profile, find the Skills & Endorsements block. You can easily manage it by clicking “Add skill” button. When you do you will see a page resembling Figure 7. If you want to use the Skills & Endorsements block, you have to choose “Yes” for “I want to be endorsed”. There are three checkboxes, which can change the properties of “my connections”. These can help you to connect people via the skills you have. Then, you are ready to add your skills.

Figure 7: Edit Skills

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

You can input the skills you have into the textbox each at a time. You cannot add more than fifty skills, so be sure to prioritize the ones you think will help you get hired in your chosen field. Type the skill name, click the add button, and you can see the skill labels under the textbox. Figure 7 shows what this process looks like on LinkedIn.

If you want to remove some skills, you can just click “x” to delete them from you skill list. This “x” is visible in Figure 7. Additionally, you can change the order in which your skills to be shown on the webpage. To do this you can drag and drop to change the position of your labels. The

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first ten items are going to be the most prominent on your profile, with the rest of your skills tucked underneath.

When you need to modify the skill list, just revisit this block. After you add all skills that you have to the skill list, remember to click save button.

How does the endorsement work? Endorsements are proof of your skills. Sometimes you can see there is a number to the right of your skill label, which is how many people verified your skill. The more people verify your skills, the higher reliability that your skills will have. After you have started endorsing your connections Linkedin will remind you, using a reminder like Figure 8, to continue to do the same for your connections..

Figure 8: Endorsement Suggestions

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

How do I manage the endorsement? To manage the endorsement you received, you need to click the “Manage endorsements” tab in the Skills & Endorsements block. Here you can see who endorses which skill you have. You are free to choose display endorsers or not.

To endorse your friends, you need to visit your friends’ home page, find the Skills block, and then you can see a small plus symbol at the right of the skill label. Click that plus symbol to endorse the skill if you think they really have that skill. You can also see how many people and

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who endorsed that skill. If you want to remove your endorsement, move the mouse to the plus symbol again, the plus symbol will change to minus symbol. Clicking the minus symbol, your endorsement will be removed.

The endorsement feature is a powerful feature provided by LinkedIn. It focuses on the skills people hold. If you are an employer, you can use this feature to find well-skilled employees. If you are looking for a job, this feature can help you to find an ideal job. It is very easy to use and all contents are in one block. All you need to do are easy tasks: click, type skill names, drag and drop. You are able to manage your skill list and endorsement such as change the order of skills and endorse your friends’ skills. If you want to improve your profile, using the endorsement feature will be a good idea.

Recommendations While endorsements are an easy way to support someone you know or to add credibility to your profile, recommendations take it a step further. Recommendations are a written story or paragraph that describes an experience you have had with the person. These go far more in depth than endorsements but really make a profile stand out to others. You can ask for recommendations from your profile by mousing over the small arrow beside the “View profile as” button.

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Clicking on the “Ask to be recommended” option visible in Figure 9 will take you to a new page where you can select what position you would like to be recommended for, who from your connections you want to ask, what they were doing at the time, and of course the message you would like to send them. With this you can ask multiple people from different positions to recommend you. The relations you had with them will be reflected in the recommendation at the end. An example of a request for a recommendation is done in Figure 10.

Once this is done the page will refresh and allow you to repeat the process, but with the addition of a new small window at the top with copies of the requests you have sent out. These have reminder buttons just in case you think your request might have been buried under other messages or forgotten.

Figure 9 Recommendation Request

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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Figure 10: Recommendation Request Form

Source: http://linkedin.ca (Adapted from source)

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Once this is done, you just have to wait for your connection to write their recommendation. Recommendations are personal and very powerful. This is somebody personally vouching for your work and skills, so be mindful of who you ask and how you ask them.

Recommendations are fantastic things to have featured on a profile. They add to the quality of a person's profile by drawing from other people's professional credibility. In the end, this makes LinkedIn a great platform by letting people use each other as sources on the same website. It is particularly good for students coming out of university, since you might have friends, group members and classmates that can vouch for your abilities in a way that can't be represented on a resume. Not only is LinkedIn's system interactive, social and easy to update, it is also accountable since endorsements and recommendations have to be backed up by a real person. When a profile is reinforced with strong referrals, it is an invaluable asset for a former student looking to start their career.