Surely you already know about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that has been around since 2003. Why is it called professional social media? Well, while other social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide features for personal interaction, the features provided on LinkedIn are used for things related to profession or work. For example, looking for a job or looking for employees.
Reporting from the LinkedIn page, the platform has 500 million users spread across more than 200 countries. The 500 million users consist of job seekers and employee recruiters.
Job seekers use the platform to apply for jobs, while recruiters use LinkedIn to offer jobs to specific people.
LinkedIn Features
Because it is intended for professional use, the LinkedIn interface is designed for a simple end result so that anyone can easily use it. Of course, the features provided on LinkedIn are much different when compared to Instagram and TikTok.
LinkedIn provides an opportunity for users to create a personal profile which usually contains a summary of ourselves, education, skills, work experience, certifications, to awards. In addition, the “post” feature on LinkedIn can be used to share our achievements and our opinions.
How to Use LinkedIn
The first thing to do when using LinkedIn is to create a profile. Creating a profile on LinkedIn usually doesn't take long, less than a few hours.
This profile is also as useful as the Curriculum Vitae (CV) that we make when applying for jobs. This profile will later make it easier for people to identify who we are, and become a personal brand in itself if we want to attract the attention of recruiters.
Benefits of using LinkedIn for Fresh Graduates and Students
Well, now we can discuss what benefits we can get by using the LinkedIn platform. Listen together, come on!
1. Build Personal Branding
As already mentioned, we can use LinkedIn to build personal branding for each of us. If you are a fresh graduate who is looking for a job, of course we want other people, especially HRD from a company or recruiter to know the advantages we have.
Starting from expertise, work experience, to the awards we have won. For students, this is also very important as an 'investment' if one day after graduating from college we want to find a certain job.
2. Attract the Attention of Recruiters
The nice thing about LinkedIn is, this platform is not only used by job seekers, but also used by job recruiters. In fact, recruiting employees online especially with a platform that is used professionally will facilitate the recruitment process.
In other words, both job seekers and recruiters benefit from a more efficient online recruitment process. Both fresh graduates and students will certainly benefit greatly from this facility.
3. Build Connections with Others
If you are a student who doesn't want to find a job right now, at least you can build connections with other people professionally. Yup, on LinkedIn you can interact with people, for example, when that person gets an achievement, you can congratulate him.
In addition, you can also send private messages to certain people you want to know.
4. Motivate yourself by seeing the achievements of others
On LinkedIn, it has become commonplace to share one's experiences and accomplishments. Besides being able to improve branding, sharing experiences can also be a trigger for other people to continue to be enthusiastic in treading their career paths.
5. Up to Date Information and Issues in the Professional World
In addition to sharing personal achievements, LinkedIn can also be used to find the latest information and issues in the professional world. This is because usually large companies also have official LinkedIn accounts which, apart from being used to recruit employees, also often provide information in their fields. Very interesting, right?
Hopefully the 5 points explained above can add to your insight about LinkedIn. If you are interested in the features available, don't hesitate to start using LinkedIn, whether you are a fresh graduate or a student!