By Jack Zhou
Social media has permeated most, if not all aspects of our lives. Taking control of your professional brand online has never been more important, as the brand ‘you’ is what employers, collaborators, clients and colleagues will see when they search for you online. While as a student your activities may be social in nature, employers are looking to understand your professional expertise – Facebook photos of the party you went to last week just won’t cut it.
I came across LinkedIn in my second year in university. At first I didn’t see the value, as I did most of my networking by simply adding friends on Facebook. As time went by I quickly noticed my business school friends were starting to adopt LinkedIn as a networking tool. They were using LinkedIn to connect to various professionals, not just students alone.
I knew I could harness the power of LinkedIn to begin networking but before I could, I knew I needed to first build a strong profile.
Creating a strong LinkedIn profile worked well for me as it helped to land me my current position as marketing intern at LinkedIn. My role is to teach career counselors and student leaders how to use LinkedIn effectively so that they can pass it onto the student communities. I am very thankful for having built my professional brand on LinkedIn. Click here for more
