Linkedin Blog

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Robin Raskin is the founder of Living in Digital Times. Through a partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, she develops conferences and exhibits showcasing technology. She is the author of A Parents’ Guide to College Life and is the former editor of PC Magazine and Family PC]

Posting an intelligent professional networking profile so that people can find you is a great first step in the job hunt, but, honestly, nobody’s really looking for you. Even if they were, the odds of them finding you versus other qualified candidates with profiles is like the old needle in the haystack. You’ll have to use your professional networking wits to seek out and attract potential employers.

Here’s how to put more oomph in your job search.

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Jeffrey Anderson is a junior accounting student at the University of Washington with a passion for business. He is without an extensive professional background yet manages to find great career opportunities]

Finding a good internship was difficult and frustrating for me. Student resources and other web options were just not enough. I wanted to know: what made a good internship, how I could set myself apart from thousands like me, and how I could find those opportunities some people are able to find?  I was able to answer all of these questions by using LinkedIn and a little enthusiasm.

Here are four things LinkedIn helped me do:

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Sheila Curran is a career strategy expert, who runs Curran Career Consulting. She is a Senior Practitioner in Human Resources and for over a decade directed career services at Brown University and Duke University. She is also the co-author of Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads: Finding a Path to Your Perfect Career]

This is the time of year when a million young people are looking for jobs, so you might assume that the lines of anxious students waiting to see a careers adviser would be as long as the ones outside the local unemployment office. Not so.

The fact is, many students associate their campus careers office with on-campus recruiting, and now that the formal recruiting cycle is over, they assume their careers office can no longer help. Nothing could be further from the truth. You may be tempted to stick your head in the sand while you enjoy your last few weeks of undergraduate bliss, but there are powerful reasons to squeeze the last few drops out of your tuition-funded career services.

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Donald Wilkes and Viola Hamilton-Wilkes are job search experts with years of experience interviewing and hiring. They are authors of a Teen Guide Job Search book, which is also available in an audio version]

Got a teen looking for work?  This brief Q & A article might help you interact positively with them during their job search.

Are there certain times of the day you shouldn’t approach teens about how their job hunt is going? The first thing in the morning may not be a good time; we suggest discussing the job search during dinner. Also, limit the number of days you discuss the job search to either two or three and this may help the teen from not feeling badgered.