Post By: Gurkanwal Singh Kang, Peer Mentor 2022
Coming to a new place, that too very far from home is surely a challenge for all. A challenge that makes you feel unsure as to which path to take. In those circumstances, it’s best for you to keep your mind open and knock on every possible door. LinkedIn is one such platform that would help you knock and open one of the crucial doors that would help you advance in your career and consequently opens new paths to cross.
Imagine someone by your side at all times that would help you achieve your goals; the support would be really encouraging for you, right; now imagine instead of 1 or 2 individuals you have a whole network of people whose thoughts and interests align with yours. Building a strong network of such people would help you solidify your professional relationships and achieve your career goals. You can get career advice from your network, and job recommendations as well. Hard work and talent surely pay off and would lead you to get the job you want, but word of mouth through your connections helps speed up the process. Now as I have set the base as to why Networking on LinkedIn is so crucial, I would like to present some points that you should keep in mind while doing Networking on LinkedIn.
- Present yourself properly: Apart from your resume, your LinkedIn profile should also be up to date. Because just like some other social media platforms, a LinkedIn profile also works as an eye-catcher for your potential network. Duly mention all your professional experiences, your projects, research papers, and other information that you would like your network to see.
- Try to get recommendations from your past connections: LinkedIn has a great feature wherein you or someone else can give recommendations/share experiences while working on the same project and how you made a contribution to the whole project. This would show how well you have worked previously within a team setting and how seriously you take up your projects.
- Connect with people you know: Start off connecting with your friends/classmates/old buddies, and use their network to expand yours. Connect with your seniors because they have gone through the same process that you’ll face, and they might have some great pieces of advice. But don’t rush for a reply, as everyone gets busy in their daily work and might reply at a later time.
- Don’t just send the connection request, personalize it: It might feel easy to just click the connect button to send the connection request and that might work half of the time. But in order to improve the odds of connecting, always send a personalized note along with your connection request so that the other person feels like you have made an effort and you genuinely want to add them to your network.
- Don’t let your close network die: It is difficult to have a strong understanding of all your connections, but if you have established a strong bond with any of your connections, try to catch up with them regularly so that all your effort doesn’t go in vain. Don’t just selfishly think that these connections would surely help you in any way, just try to be in a good relationship, you never know how things can turn up.
- Keep engaging on LinkedIn: Each like and share you do on posts and every post that you publish on your LinkedIn profile shows up to your connections as well. And once your connections see your name regularly, it’s a good chance that they might remember you eventually, which is a major win for you.
- Join groups and attend events: There are many groups available on LinkedIn that you can join based on your liking and you can expand your network by connecting people from that group as you would have common interests to share. The same goes for the countless events that get posted on LinkedIn.
- Send InMail to recruiters: While looking for job opportunities, you can pass on your resume and show interest in that position to the recruiter of the respective company. LinkedIn provides this chance to send them an email. Although this is a LinkedIn premium feature. Pro Tip – Some people giveaway 6-month access for LinkedIn premium on LinkedIn itself, so keep an eye on such posts.
Getting support during your journey in any aspect of your life is really helpful, so remember in order to grow in your professional life/career, you can seek help from the people who are already in the field of your interests. A strong connection can open many new doors for you. So, start networking on LinkedIn, and on that note here is my LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurkanwalsinghkang/), maybe we can help each other in the near future! 🙂