8 Reasons Why Students Should Use LinkedIn

In 2013, LinkedIn lowered its minimum age requirement from 18 years to 14 years. Social media influencers are constantly pushing content and courses for students and freshers which may be greatly helpful for the latter in being able to enhance their LinkedIn profiles, and subsequently being able to attract future recruiters and business associates.

LinkedIn is a professional networking website. Its interface is familiar to that of Facebook. Users can create a profile, post about themselves, and connect with professionals. They may also comment on, and like posts by others.

On LinkedIn, the important sections are those of your experience, skills, education, and recommendations. It’s a window to your professional journey and personal brand, or we may also call it a functional online resume. It’s the first impression of an individual as a professional. You can think of it as a personal website of an individual where one can find details about the person, and their academic and professional journey. As you grow academically and professionally, you can keep adding your small and big achievements to your LinkedIn profile. It also helps one to learn from the journeys of other professionals, mentors, businesses, and thought leaders.

LinkedIn has over 800 million users worldwide and over 83 million people in India alone, according to Statista, 2022. This showcases the popularity of the platform in our densely populated country as we come second to the US in terms of the number of active users.

But why should a fun-loving high school student worry about the ‘suit-and-tie’ networking website? Turns out there are a number of reasons why high school students should be active on LinkedIn. Let’s take a look at the reasons why it’s time for you to start taking LinkedIn a little more seriously.

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Marketing Yourself

LinkedIn is a great and easy way to market oneself as a professional. It allows you to talk, post, and share about your skills, achievements, and interests. You can post about your accomplishments that you are proud of and want recruiters and college admissions offices to know about. This would work to mark one’s digital footprint in the professional realm.

Early Networking

LinkedIn allows you to connect with professionals you admire, and get to know about people they admire and follow. In a way, it works like a ripple effect for your network. This will most likely help you find people you’d want to work with. So, don’t be shy to send a request to people you want to connect with, along with a personal note explaining why you want to connect.

Stay Ahead Of The Game By Networking Early

Staying Updated About The Industry

Staying active on LinkedIn helps you stay updated with what’s new and latest in the industry. Such information will help you to expand your knowledge of the field and the advancements it witnesses.

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Adding Weight To College Applications

Having a link to your LinkedIn profile on your college application along with your credentials, portfolio, etc. adds more weight to your application. Colleges might not consider your LinkedIn profile as the deciding factor when reviewing your application, but they would most definitely get an idea of your seriousness towards your education and career.

Convenient Way For Recruiters To Verify

These days, all working professionals use LinkedIn. When you apply for any kind of work opportunity, be it an internship, volunteering work, freelancing, or a formal job, going through your LinkedIn profile becomes a convenient way for your prospective recruiter to verify your background in terms of academics and work experience.

Finding Opportunities

Let’s not forget that the primary goal of the platform is to connect businesses to the right talent and vice-versa. You can learn about job and internship opportunities via LinkedIn, as organisations are very active in posting vacancies on their official LinkedIn pages. These posts include details like job descriptions, location, number of vacancies, their exact requirements, and also details of who and how to contact. Once you have the email id, at least the first leg of the journey is completed. You can apply to places where you feel you would be a good fit. Also, you can turn on ‘job alerts’, and get regular updates about vacancies through notifications.

LinkedIn offers a variety of free courses to its users. As a student, you should take these as opportunities and add these certifications and credentials to your resume. Some of these courses are about managing finances, product management, digital marketing, advancement in Excel, and much more. Also, personal development courses like those about building resilience, handling conflict, negotiation skills, stress management, etc. contribute to your personal growth.

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Getting Found

Recruiters are now doing away with the traditional processes of hiring and increasingly relying on data and algorithms to find fresh talent. Using the right keywords on your LinkedIn profile would increase your searchability. This would increase the chances of the right people finding and eventually approaching you with opportunities, rather than you approaching them. The odds of matching yourself to the right job increase with carefully handling your LinkedIn profile.

Showcasing Your Talent

Lastly, LinkedIn can be a medium for enthusiastic high school students to display their talents through blogs or portfolios. You can post about your progress on a project you have taken up, or write your thoughts on a book you have recently read, or you could also discuss the positive impact your efforts had in improving the living conditions of the indigent in your society, or simply share an article that moved you. You never know what might resonate with others.

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LinkedIn can prove to be an invaluable asset for high school students when used the right way. It is a great platform to market yourself, your skills, and your achievements in order to attract opportunities. In a subsequent piece, we shall talk about what makes for a good LinkedIn profile. It’s a good idea to start early, be active, and keep posting. Engage with your audience and learn on the way. This way, you will be ahead of others for college admissions and encashing on work opportunities.

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Parisraja Bajpai is an Organisational Psychologist, with extensive hands-on experience in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Employee Counselling, Employee Engagement, Training and Development. She is currently heading the HR department at Nexstgo.