Tag: LinkedIn

End of (Spring) Semester quickly approaching – still figuring out Summer 2019 plans?

Kevin Haines, Associate Director

Now that you’re back from Spring Break, I’m sure that you’re feeling like the pressure is on to complete the semester and get ready for summer 2019. Many students have figured out their summer plans already, whether they have an internship, a full-time job, or simply have the luxury of relaxing before entering into a job in the real world. Regardless of their plans, if you haven’t found the perfect internship yet, or are still not sure what you are doing this summer – that’s OKAY! It’s easy (and normal) to feel stressed after you hear that all your friends received offers from companies all over the world. Good for them – be happy for them! Just because you haven’t found something yet doesn’t mean it’s too late. Last year, we had students find summer internships as late as May. Yes, of course this isn’t “ideal,” but don’t worry – Career Services is here to help guide you. Here are a few suggestions to help you plan the remaining days of the spring 2019 semester and to help you land an internship/job:

  • Update your Resume and Cover Letter
    • If you haven’t already had Career Services review your resume and cover letter, do so ASAP. Even if Career Services looked at your resume last semester, it’s always a good idea to have another look at it, especially if you’ve updated it since last semester.
  • Network
    • One of the first things I ask students in advising meetings is “have you started networking yet?” It can seem awkward and silly at first to reach out to a random person/Penn alum, but, take that thought and throw it away. Networking has become one of the key ingredients for job success. Tap into your network and see who you know, or who you know who knows someone who knows someone else. Yes, networking is an ongoing, sometimes long process, but in the end, it will help you more than if you didn’t network at all. By cultivating networking relationships, you’re helping your future self in the internship/job search, while also meeting new people. So, take a look at LinkedIn and QuakerNet, because there are people waiting to hear from you!
  • Utilize Job Search Sites
    • LinkedIn, CareerShift, Indeed, Handshake, etc. There are tons of websites to help narrow down your search. One main resource is the Career Services website: “What Do Penn Students Do?” and “Resources by Career Field” are two sections of the website that showcase companies where students have gotten internships/jobs at in the past and also additional links to websites specific to majors. Check them out – you never know what you might find!
  • Jobscan.co
    • Yes, .co, not .com. Not sure if you have the required skills/experience for a job? Try using Jobscan.co to see what percentage your resume matches the job description. If you’ve never signed up before, you get 5 free trials (10 additional for each time you refer someone to the website!). Copy and paste your resume on the left and then the job posting that you’re interested in on the right, and Jobscan.co will scan your resume to see how much of a match you are for the job. Don’t be discouraged if you receive a low percentage – Jobscan.co highlights sections you might be missing that you may have experience in that will help move your resume up above others. You do NOT need a 100% match – even if you just get your resume to be a 60% match – that’s still really good! Try using some of their suggestions, but make sure you are being 100% honest in all that you’re including on your resume.

Remember – don’t compare yourself to others. This is very important and you should remind yourself of this should you feel yourself thinking “well how come I don’t have an internship yet?” You have your OWN path. And whatever you choose will be just right.

LinkedIn and Career Research

The fall semester is a good time to reflect on next steps in your job and internship searches. Career Services is here to assist you with navigating the process.  One of the most commonly asked questions from students is “How do I learn more about a particular field/company/speak with people who work there?”.  LinkedIn has become one of the most effective and efficient resources to facilitate introductions, create connections, and learn about employers, industries, and job opportunities.  Using LinkedIn as an information tool is an important aspect of your career exploration and job search.  It serves a variety of purposes such as:  branding yourself/skills, researching employers, as well as connecting with people who can share their insight on topics and career fields and answer your questions.  LinkedIn also provides a convenient and efficient way to network.  Networking is divided into two parts.  First, it can be viewed as an opportunity to gather information and second, it allows you to share information about yourself in order to achieve your career goals.  October is an excellent time to familiarize yourself with LinkedIn and start to establish some connections.  Some key aspects to remember when using LinkedIn:

    • When using LinkedIn, be sure to join the University of Pennsylvania Alumni Group. You’re eligible to be a part of this community while both a student and after you have graduated.
    • Remember that your profile is your brand. Therefore, you want to ensure it’s a professional looking photo (e.g. not from a social/party setting). The summary section on your profile is a narrative that describes your academic and professional background.
    • Linkedin enables you to learn about employers that interest you. You can elect to follow employers within the newsfeed in addition to identifying potential connections at that company who could share with you their advice and insight into their experience, culture and mission of the company, and the hiring process/recruiting process.
    • Connections may be defined as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree. The category next to a person’s name indicates how you might know the person and who you may mutually be connected to. This is very useful to know since you could then potentially reach out to a mutual connection and ask for an “e-introduction” with the alumnus/alumna. In the message, you could ask for a 15-20 minute conversation to ask the alum about his/her role, experience at the company and advice he/she may have for you as you move forward with your job search.
  • We can help you with using LinkedIn as a networking tool so feel free to come in for an advising appointment at Career Services. Appointments can be made by calling 215-898-7531 or through Handshake.

Networking Using Technology: Quakernet & LinkedIn

Anne Marie Gercke, Associate Director

The term “networking” can be daunting, especially for those of us who don’t find “schmoozing” or “wheeling and dealing” to be experiences we typically enjoy. For that reason, job-seekers may feel frustrated or even stressed when it constantly pops up in career-related conversations. When I ask my students about their networking endeavors, I will sometimes hear, “Oh, I don’t really have any helpful connections.” In reality, any Penn student or alum with a PennKey has thousands of connections. They just need to know where – and how – to look and find them.

So, here is a quick tutorial to help those students and alumni who have not yet been able to master the art of networking.

First, this is what you’ll need:

  1. Computer/internet access
  2. PennKey and password

Second, here is what you can proactively do:

  1. Create a LinkedIn account (if you don’t already have one)
  2. Bookmark these sites: LinkedIn Find Alumni Tool | Quakernet
  3. Join the University of Pennsylvania LinkedIn Alumni Group (you are welcome to join as a current student)

Next, we will start with LinkedIn to find some alums. When you go to the Find Alumni Tool, you’ll see a page that looks like this:

The site currently pre-populates with over 145,000 alums who have Penn as their most recent university. You can filter the results so that you are working with a more manageable number. For ease, we will narrow it to alums who work at Google in San Francisco. You can do this by clicking on the tabs for Google and San Francisco Bay Area and the results will automatically refilter.

Now we have 256 results. We could narrow even further, but this will do for now. I’ll scroll down to the first row of results to see what we have.

I’ve hidden the identities of these alums to respect their privacy, but this screenshot should give you the general idea of what you’ll see. These are the first five of 256 Penn alums working at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area. This view allows you to see some basic information, like their graduation year and if you have connections in common (see red arrow). If you click on their name and then their profile, you can learn more about them and their career. Let’s click on that first result.

We can see that this person works for Google as the Latin America Marketing Lead. If it would make sense to connect based on your interests, you may reach out to one of your mutual connections (in this case, the screen is showing us we have two connections in common, but again, I hid the photos of the connections to protect their privacy since this tutorial is for information purposes only). I could then potentially reach out to a mutual connection to ask for an “e-introduction” with the alum. The goal would be to set up a 15-20 minute conversation to ask the alum about his/her role, experience at the company and advice he/she may have for you in the field. This is what we call informational interviewing and this is how networking is accomplished.

I know what you are thinking. Is it normal to contact strangers out of the blue? Short answer: yes. Your peers are doing it. More importantly, your direct competition is doing it. You should be doing it. Most alums are very happy to chat. For any job you are considering applying to, it’s a really great practice to try to reach out to at least someone at the company beforehand to try to make a connection. As you can see here, thanks to technology, it doesn’t have to take a ton of time.

Sometimes you will not have anyone in common with the fellow Quaker. Perhaps when you click on the person’s name, however, you see you are in the same group.

If you are in the University of Pennsylvania LinkedIn Alumni Group and you see the word ‘Group’ like you do above, it’s very plausible that is the group to which you both belong as there are currently 40k+ members. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn requires you to simultaneously request to connect if you want to message someone (if you aren’t already connected). But if you are in the same group, you can navigate to that group, type the person’s name into the member search, toggle over their name and a little email icon will show.

That’s how you can send an email through LinkedIn without having to simultaneously ask to connect.

Now let’s say you find someone you’d like to have a conversation with, but you have no connections in common and you aren’t members of the same group. Here’s where Quakernet can come in handy.

Quakernet is a great tool because it’s all encompassing of everyone who has come through Penn, with their email address. When someone gets a new job or is promoted do they run to Quakernet to make sure it’s up-to-date? Maybe. But probably not that often. Since it is such a large database, it’s very difficult to keep it as accurate as LinkedIn, which is solely updated by the individual and much more a part of mainstream social media. That said, here is why Quakernet is a very valuable tool.

Let’s look at this person (see below) as an example. Because I see the 3rd in place of 2nd (meaning we have common connections) or Group (meaning we are in the same group), I know that the only way I could reach out to this person through LinkedIn would be to simultaneously request to connect. Some alums are fine with this, so you can use your discretion on how comfortable you are requesting to connect with people you have never met.

However, another method would be to plug the alum’s name into the Quakernet keyword search to find his email address.

Voila! As you can see, his information hasn’t been updated in Quakernet, so if I had run a search in Quakernet this alum wouldn’t have been part of the results because he doesn’t have Google in his profile. However, when I click on his profile I am able to get his direct email address (in most cases several emails addresses) so the database is an excellent too for finding contact information. Once I found him through Quakernet I’d send him an email indicating I found his information through Penn’s networking tools and I’d be really grateful for 15-20 minutes of his time to talk about his career in marketing. Again, having these conversations and making connections is an effective and efficient way to network, and if you follow the steps I outlined, it doesn’t have to be quite as daunting as it seems.

You can learn more about networking on our website, and we are happy to walk you through the process in person, as well. Now that you have the tools and know how to use them, get out there and connect!

 

Check out the new LinkedIn Students App

Alyssa Perkins-Chatterton, Administrative Assistant for the College Team

Last week, LinkedIn launched its newest feature, the LinkedIn linkinStudents app. The app is geared specifically graduating seniors who are looking for help in their job search. The app helps you look for jobs that are a good fit based on your major, companies that recruit at your school and the career paths of alumni with similar degrees.*

LinkedIn wants students to look at this new tool as their “personal job exploration guide”. When accessing the app you are given 5 items to review: a career suggestion based on your school and major, an article to read on various career-related topics, a company that often recruits from your school, a list of job suggestions based on recent alumni from your school with a similar major, and lastly, the app provides an actual job posting that you might be interested in based on your major/school.** What is also helpful is the “extra credit” option that allows you to swipe through more of these suggestions and add even more information about yourself such as your interests, goals and careers you find interesting. This option allows you to have a more personalized experience. Keep in mind that the app does tend to use a student’s major as one of the main data points when making suggestions. As we know, your major does not firmly dictate a straight path to your career. We’ve had English majors go into Finance and Religious Studies majors join the FBI! Just check out our survey reports to see! While your major should certainly reflect your interests, your supplemental activities and internships also help you learn what career path is right for you. This is especially true for our liberal arts students who can often have a variety of experiences that contribute to their career goals. That being said, be sure to utilize the extra credit section and add in those extra details about your interests and goals in order to have a more tailored experience!

studentappIn general, LinkedIn has received positive feedback from student users. The most common trend being that students reported the app very easy to use and navigate.

This is a great first step and career exploration tool for graduating seniors to use when planning for those next steps. However, be sure to utilize our office and resources as well! Again, we have career plan survey reports that offer great data and insight into what our recent grads are doing post Penn. And as always, call us to make an appointment or stop by for walk-in hours! We are here for all of your career related needs.

*https://blog.linkedin.com/2016/04/18/introducing-the-linkedin-students-app–helping-soon-to-be-colleg

Let Your Next Employer Find You!

I read an interesting article this week on Human Resource Executive Online from Wharton’s very own Peter Capelli.  It pointed out that the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found in a recent study that the “majority of hires never report looking for a new job”. In othe words, instead of proactively researching and applying for specific positions, most individuals who took new jobs were “found” by their new employers without the candidate proactively seeking them out. To put it another way, individuals were “poached” from their employers and enticed to start work with new organizations.  Of course, current students who are not already in the labor force will need to continue to be proactive about looking and applying for jobs and internships, but this is a good lesson that in addition to being proactively appying for jobs there are many more passive ways that you can demonstrate what you have to offer to potential employers.  Here are just three ways to more “passively” build your network in the hopes that your next employer will find you!

  • Make sure your LinkedIn profile is updated and professional. Recruiters are increasingly using LinkedIn to find great candadates for jobs and it is an excellent way to showcase your qualifications. Even if an employer inititally discovers you from a resume you submitted for a specific position, they are still likely to view your LinkedIn profile for additional details.  Find out more about using Linkedin in your job search by waching this webinar which was co-sponsored by Penn Alumni Relations and Career Services. You can also find additional resources and a link to join the University of Pennsylvania Alumni LinkedIn Group here.  (And, yes, current students can join this group!)
  • Get out there!  Make an effort to meet people working in fields of interest to you. Not only will you learn more about prospective career fields, but you will also grow your network, so that when a job opening occurs someone might think of you before actually posting the job to the world at large. Attend speaker programs on campus (and stick around to talk to the speakers afterwards if you are able), join student groups to meet individuals with like-minded career interests, or join a professional association (which often offer very discounted rates to current students).
  • Be active on social media.  Follow organizations on Twitter that interest you and contribute to conversations online so that people get to know who you are. Of course, make sure your contributions are thoughtful and well crafted to ensure a strong impression.  LinkedIn groups can be another great way to keep abreast on what is happening in your field of interest.
  • Connect with Penn alumni. The Penn network is an amazing resource to connect with individuals working in areas of interest to you. Use the QuakerNet directory (myquakernet.com) or LinkedIn to connect with them.