Watch this video to learn three reasons why your LinkedIn Profile matters.
Ready to learn how to make your profile stand out?
Did you just say “Hmm…I wonder why I should care about my LinkedIn profile?” Awesome. I'm Caitlin Faas, psychology professor and coach excited to give you three reasons why you should care about your profile – Career, Connection, and Proof.
1. Career development
First -- your career. Everybody’s using LinkedIn for the job hunt. Both employers are on there looking for you and recruiters are on there looking for you and they want to find somebody with the right fit and you might be that person. So, if you haven’t been on the job hunt in a while, that might be news and I actually require for all of my college students to make a profile and we try to make it as snazzy as possible, so that they can use it as they look for summer internships or in a couple of years when they're getting ready to graduate. They actually come back and say, “Somebody found me on LinkedIn for a job.” I'm like, “Terrific!” So, career development is one of the main reasons why people use LinkedIn.
2. Connections
A second reason to use LinkedIn is for connections whether or not you're on the job hunt. It’s a way to do online networking and you can send messages to people that maybe you both went to the same college, maybe you're at the same company, but they're up in the New York branch and you're in Michigan. There are all kinds of possibilities there. And even if you're not looking to network specifically with anybody, you think you might not want to network with somebody, it’s pretty cool to be on the receiving end. So maybe, the college student finds you because you both went to the same college and you're 10 or 20 years ahead and they’d like to ask you a question about your company, your experience, or your education background. So, you can both look for connections and people will find you.
3. Proof
So, we’ve got career, connections, and the last reason to care about your profile would be for proof. Even me as an example, I told you that I was a psychology professor but you might wonder “Are we sure about this? Do we know she’s for real?” Well, go look at my LinkedIn profile and you can see where I teach, where are my degrees from. All of those details that you might not be able to either ask because I'm delivering information to you or sometimes it’s just nice to look up somebody that you're connecting with through another venue and say “Oh, I don’t have to ask them where did you get your degree, what year it was, all of that. I just quickly look at their LinkedIn profile.” You can learn a lot about somebody that way.
So, three reasons: Career, Connection and Proof. That’s why you should care. I hope I've convinced you there. So, if I have, then actually doing the work of updating your LinkedIn profile and tips and tricks is available.