It’s Time to Get LinkedIn

Are you on LinkedIn?  If you are not, you should be! LinkedIn has become the primary online tool for professional branding and marketing.  Now is the time to familiarize yourself with it and begin to think about how you can utilize LinkedIn for your professional success.  As you are surely aware by now, it can be extraordinarily difficult to convey to potential employers your depth and variety of experience, especially if you have an extensive prior work history.  LinkedIn allows you to provide a more complete picture of your professional self and interests.

Next semester, CSO will be hosting a workshop devoted to how to curate your LinkedIn profile to meet your specific goals.  For now, however, here is a list of simple and quick items to check off your LinkedIn to do list now or over winter break, so that you are prepared next semester to dive in and manage your online professional profile to align in with your objectives.

  • Add a professional photo to your profile. There are many people on LinkedIn who have not even gone this far.  If you have not done this simple step, it sends a signal to potential employers that you are invested in LinkedIn and makes them question whether the other information provided is either up-to-date or thought out.
  • Add the information on your resume (and content you had to cut) to LinkedIn. For significant work experience, be sure to provide a description of your position and the work you did.  You can provide more of a narrative description here than what is used for resumes. Make sure to connect to your undergrad institution and UMKC Law, as that will provide a good base for contacts.
  • Add your current connections from undergrad, law school, previous work experiences, etc. You can import your address book from Gmail, Outlook, etc. and will provide you with a good start.  For legal employers with whom you want to connect, make sure you only add those with whom you have had a previous introduction and personalize your message when you submit your request.  Generally, do not add anyone on LinkedIn that you have not met or been in contact with previously.
  • Find relevant LinkedIn groups that reflect your interests (bar associations, practice groups, industry groups, etc) and join. This is a great way to signal your interests and career objectives to reviewers of your LinkedIn profile.  Also, follow potential employers or employers similar to the type in which you have an interest.  Law firms and companies usually have a generic group LinkedIn page that you can follow without needing a specific attorney contact or connection.

If you do these things, you will be in a great position if potential employers look you up (which they will).  Also, you will be ready to come to the LinkedIn workshop scheduled for the spring semester, where we will go more in depth on what should be included on your profile to leverage the technology for your benefit.

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