Intro to LinkedIn
When it comes to social media, I often feel way out of my league. All of these successful people out there with hundreds, thousands, millions of followers. How do you stand out? Well, maybe if you’re looking to grow professionally, there’s only one platform you need to master — LinkedIn.
Q: What is LinkedIn and how can it best be optimized to effectively help you expand your network online and in real life.
When we hear the word, “LinkedIn,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
Are you about to update your resume? Are you looking for another job? Are you dismissing it as ‘just another social media site’?
It’s not wrong to consider LinkedIn for any of those things, but I see it’s potential for something more.
For me, LinkedIn is a career resource where you can establish ourselves professionally beyond the walls of the workplace. We can slowly build connections throughout the world, learn new skills, share our thoughts, search for new opportunities, and create the same opportunities for those we meet.
Unlike the other social mainstays like Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, LinkedIn was created specifically for professionals. It’s purpose is to help career-minded individuals better themselves as they rise through the ranks of their own careers.
As an Architect, I’ve found LinkedIn to be an invaluable resource for my own career growth. Today, I wanted to share the four ways I’ve used to get started in LinkedIn so that you can hit the ground running for yourself.
Present Your Professional Self
I use LinkedIn as a primary space to present my professional side to the world. I think of it as a hub where I can showcase my career endeavors, my successes, and my failures.
The first step to create an epic profile.
Depending on where we fall in our careers, we may not feel our careers are particularly epic. Don’t worry though. It’s simply a matter of getting started and building it up over time. One day you’ll look at your profile and smile at how amazing it’s become.
Headshot / Banner
There are two graphics you need to make sure are on point for your profile regardless of your experience level.
The first is your Headshot. Keep it simple and professional. It should NOT be the random selfie from the party last Saturday you posted on Facebook. Instead, imagine the type of photo a model might use in their personal portfolio, but refocused towards an office setting. It’s tasteful, in business attire, shot from a moderate distance (including your head, shoulders, part of your torso).
The second is your Banner. The Banner is often neglected on LinkedIn, so make sure to create a graphic of your work or something that professionally represents you. For my own banner, I created a graphic that caters both to my personal design sensibilities and incorporates a quote of my own. In this way it shares what I’m about and adds some flair to the top of the page.
Title / Summary
Your Title and Summary will separate you from the crowd and quickly identify key characteristics about who you are.
Don’t squander the opportunity here to rattle off your professional life as though it’s a grocery list.
You have a point of view. You have successes to be proud of. You have an interest in building your career.
Take this as the opportunity to blend these pieces in a way that tells a story only you can tell about yourself.
Experience / Education
This section is likely one you’re all too familiar with. If you’ve ever created a resume, I bet you’ve listed the places you’ve worked at, the degrees you’ve earned, and broken down all of your accomplishments in a tidy, well-conceived list.
For the most part, the same can be said for your Experience and Education Sections on LinkedIn.
But there is one difference between a resume and a LinkedIn profile people often neglect. LinkedIn allows you to expand upon what you did at each of your previous places of employment in greater detail than you would want to in a resume.
How did you solve an interesting or relevant problem at your last job?
What special project did you take on in school?
Where did you focus your time in your career?
Remember, LinkedIn is a creative counterpart to your resume. It doesn’t need to be as stuffy, but it should still follow a few key rules. Be brief, be truthful, be interesting, and be professional.
Recommendations
Ready for the LinkedIn secret weapon?
LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to ask for recommendations from anyone else you may have as a connection on the platform.
Gone are the days of long, drawn out recommendations and the process it takes to get them. All you need to do is select the ‘Ask for Recommendation’ option in your profile. From there, select someone within your network and send them a brief request to write something for you on your behalf.
The key here is to be specific and concise in your request. This matters for both what you ask in your recommendation and who you ask as well. For example, you might ask a colleague at your firm to recommend you based on a project you worked on together. Or you could ask a peer on a volunteer committee to speak to your work as a volunteer.
Skills
Did you know that you can also list your skills on your profile? Yep, it’s true! Think of it as the lite version of recommendations.
For example, if you’re an all-star with a software like Revit, you can list that skill in your profile. Your connections can then click to confirm that you actually possess that skill when they read your profile or when LinkedIn asks them to endorse you from time to time.
The goal here is to obtain as many endorsements of the skills you’ve listed as possible so that LinkedIn considers you to be ‘highly skilled.’ The easiest way to to do that is to do your job well in the real world and prove to others that you truly are skilled in those areas.
Take a look at what skills others are listing within the profession. Use similar wording and jargon. People are less likely to endorse a skill you have if they don’t understand what it is.
After you have a few skills endorsed by your connections, make sure to prioritize your top three. They’ll pop up on your profile as the skills you’re essentially the most proud of. This is really helpful if you’re trying to prove to others that you are well-versed in something specific.
Top Ways to Use LinkedIn
Connect
Once you’ve established a killer profile, it’s time to build out your connections and your overall network.
These are the primary types of connections you might consider depending on your interests and experience level:
Colleagues
Peers Classmates
Alumni Potential Clients
Professionals with Similar Interests
Potential Employers
Product Reps
Consultants
People connect with people.
The way you connect with people can be simple, but it does take practice to successfully connect with others on LinkedIn as in the real world.
If you saw someone in person at an event who you thought would make a great connection, would you walk up to them, hand them your card, and ask for theirs?
Please tell me you’re yelling “No!” at the screen right now.
While it may be tempting to connect with every person you can find on the platform--be careful. If you try to do so without a thoughtful message, you’re likely to never hear from your potential connection again.
Many miss the point of LinkedIn as a social platform. They get swept up in the opportunity to sell and forget that the point of LinkedIn is first and foremost connection, not sales.
A while back, LinkedIn incorporated a feature to fight SPAM (unsolicited junk mail). When someone chooses to ‘ignore’ your connection request, they have the option to also select ‘I don’t know this person.’ If your account builds up too many of those alerts, LinkedIn will shut it down.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool to connect with others professionally, but you need to approach each new connection with respect.
Start small and connect with a few people who seem to share a few of your interests. After that, broaden your reach a little bit at a time. Connect with other Architects and designers in cities or at firms that you admire. Talk to them about something that they’ve posted that you appreciate.
Start a dialogue that matters.
Get a Job
Since you’re getting the hang of LinkedIn now with your fancy profile and new connections, it’s time to consider another aspect of the platform—the illustrious job search.
Now, perhaps you’re perfectly happy with the job you have now. That’s great—keep it up!
But if you ever have the itch to try something new (as most professionals tend to move around many times during their career), LinkedIn was built to help you find the job you’re looking for. There are a few tools in particular you should check out.
The Job Search Tool will allows you to plug in keywords, locations, and other information to identify jobs that have been posted to platform. If you find a job posting with “Easy Applications,” that means that you can apply directly using your LinkedIn profile for that particular position.
See—wasn’t it a good idea to brush up that profile!
In your search, you’ll see who works where you’re applying. LinkedIn pulls this information from your own connections list. Say you want to move to a new firm and your friend works within the organization already (even if they work in a different office). You can have them refer you on LinkedIn. That referral acts as another type of direct recommendation that will help your application stand out.
The Salary Search Tool will provide you with a ballpark salary based on the job title and location that you enter into the system. The salary is generated based on data collected through the job search platform.
It can help to give you a “relatively” accurate look at what you might be able to make if you were to switch jobs in your area, make a move up in your career to a higher level, or move to another city altogether.
Be careful though. “Software Architect” is not the same thing as “Intermediate Architect.” Sometimes LinkedIn gets confused about terminology. It’s best in that instance to add other filters such as the industry you’re searching within to ensure your results are more accurate.
Take a look around the job tools. They can be used to help you find a new job, understand the requirements of positions you’re aiming to have someday, or help you understand your overall value. Maybe it’ll even help you get that raise you’ve been meaning to get after.
Learn and Share
LinkedIn is a social media platform meant for learning and sharing of ideas, knowledge, and opinions.
Like most other social media, LinkedIn has a News Feed where you can read articles others post natively on the platform. You can comment and like updates that your connections make and even celebrate milestones in their careers.
Looking to share your voice in a more structured way? LinkedIn has a built-in platform, similar in many ways to Medium. It enables you to write articles and then post them to your News Feed and your profile. After you publish, LinkedIn will add a link to your profile to help you slowly build up a library of written work on the platform.
It’s important to note that everything I’ve mentioned so far on the platform is essentially 100% free. But if you’re looking for something truly amazing, you may want to consider upgrading your profile to the paid version of LinkedIn for this next item. It’s truly a game-changer.
Online courses are trending upward exponentially because of their convenience to produce and consume.
That said, LinkedIn acquired a little site by the name of Lynda.com a few years back. LinkedIn turned around and connected all of the online courses from Lynda’s library of content to the premium version of LinkedIn. At about $30/month as of this writing, you have unlimited access to hours upon hours of guided tutorials on everything from Revit to SketchUp to Construction Detailing to Business Management, and everything in between.
Now, $30/month isn’t cheap for most people. However, if you’re looking to learn something new in a variety of topics, it might just be worth it for you. Not to mention, LinkedIn does offer the first month for free.
Final Thoughts
I know that this entire essay may sound like a fluffy ad for LinkedIn, but that’s just because I really believe in the product they’ve created.
Consider the following:
Use LinkedIn to present yourself professionally to the world.
Keep your profile up to date and engage on the platform.
Network with people you resonate with, but don’t SPAM them to do so.
Share your ideas and listen to what others are saying.
Treat your experience on LinkedIn as another opportunity to learn.
It’s easy to forget that your career needs to be maintained and cared for in order for you to grow professionally. LinkedIn simply fills in the gaps and, dare I say it, makes it really freaking fun in the process.
I may be a bit of a career nerd, but I’m glad something like LinkedIn is out there to help Architects like me navigate my own career with confidence.
Additional Resources
(Article) How to Build the Perfect LinkedIn Profile—According to Recruiters // Career Contessa
(Video) How to Use LinkedIn For Beginners—7 LinkedIn Profile Tips // Heather Austin
(Video) The Number One LinkedIn Strategy // Gary Vaynerchuk
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