LinkedIn – Page 4 – Penn & Beyond

I’m Here to Get You Linked-In.

We’re 10 days into 2013. Yay! You may have some New Year resolutions related to your career, and if you do, I hope one of them involves LinkedIn.

As the social media manager here at Career Services, my personal mission is to help any student or alum become comfortable with this amazing tool. Why? It is powerful. Let’s review the facts on just why it’s so powerful from LinkedIn’s website:

1) There are more than 187 million members in over 200 countries and territories. That is a LOT of people. Odds are, if you want to learn about an organization or a career trajectory, you can find someone on LinkedIn and see what they did. For example, do you want to be a consultant? I would recommend looking for someone who is currently an associate at a consulting firm you are interested in and see where were they before? This is one way to get an idea of how you can follow a similar path.

2) As of the school year ending May 2012, there are over 20 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn. They are LinkedIn’s fastest-growing demographic. Part of on-going professional development and one’s ability to find positions after college (whether that is the day after you graduate or 5 years after you graduate), it is important to stay connected to your peers.

3) Over 39 million members in Europe as of June 30, 2012 and more than 34 million members in Asia and the Pacific as of September 30, 2012. Want to work in Europe? Want to find a job back home in China? One way to do that is to connect with those who are working there right now, especially if they are Penn alums, and ask them for advice.

So you see, LinkedIn can be useful/powerful/helpful/awesome (in my eyes). Now you’re wondering, how do I get started? How can I take my LinkedIn profile to the next level? This semester we’re offering a variety of programs to help undergraduate and graduate students. Here is a list of hand-on workshops offered in the Weigle Information Commons at Van Pelt:

Jan 14, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Jan 24, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Feb 28, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Mar 13, 2013, 12:00 PM-01:00 PM

To sign up for these workshops offered, visit the registration page.

We’ll also offer custom programs for different populations throughout the semester. Information on those workshops can be found on the Spring 2013 program and event pages for undergraduate and SEAS master’s students and for graduate students and postdocs. And, of course, if you can’t make one of these programs, utilize our LinkedIn resource page or come in and meet with a counselor.

Social Media Updates: Fall 2012 Preview

Fall 2012 is an exciting time for Career Services and our growing social media presence. Here is a quick preview of what to expect from us:

Social Media Challenge. In less than two weeks, on September 17th, we will launch our first ever, Social Media Challenge. It’s going to be awesome for a few reasons. First and foremost, there is a pretty sweet prize, a white, iPad 2. Not only will this help you with your classes and manage your own social media presence, but it is sponsored by the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn. Second, we tapped into our creative talent here at Career Services, to create dynamic clues to highlight the wide-range of resources we have for all the undergraduate and graduate students we serve. Third, did I mention the sweet prize? White. iPad. 2. Finally, it is super easy to enter. Watch the clues that will be shared exclusively on our social media platforms, and fill out the online entry form, which will also be shared on our social media platforms. The more you participate, the greater your chances to win! It’s very similar to networking on LinkedIn, where the more connections you make, the more power your network holds.

Where can you find a full list of our social media accounts? Go to the challenge’s website or look for a “penncareerserv” handle on your favorite social media platforms, like Facebook.com/PennCareerServ.

Social Media Themes. All of you have an interest in different career paths, graduate school programs and internship opportunities. Each week, our social media platforms will have a different theme to share resources relevant for these diverse interests. Upcoming themes include:

September 10th – 14th: Navigating Opportunities in Business. What do you need to know to find and succeed in business? Inspired by our career fairs, Career Link and ECAD.

September 17th – 21st: Discover Career Services Resources. A broad overview of all that we can do for you, inspired by our Social Media Challenge. The resources we share will likely help you find the answers to our clues, and your odds to win that white iPad 2.

September 24th – 28th: Policy and Government Careers. Want to work for the government? Make an impact through policymaking? We’ll look at relevant resources leading up to our annual, Policy and Government Career Fair, on September 28th.

October 1st – 5th: Common Good Careers. We’ll continue our focus on career opportunities that make an impact, and expand our scope to include nonprofits, social services and other public interest career and internship opportunities.

As you can see, there is a lot coming up on Career Services’ social media channels. So, stay tuned and be sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Pinterest, and watch our videos on Vimeo. We have lots to share and want to interact through these platforms, because after all, that is what social media is all about!

Online Dating: Jobs Edition

LinkedIn website traffic volume is booming – employers and job seekers are proactively using the site as an effective tool to connect. There are also many articles on current recruiting practices and social media. As the LinkedIn community becomes more central to hiring for many companies, I have become interested in the fact that most people now are including a photo, a component of what LinkedIn considers to be “completing” your online profile.

In the USA, the convention of attaching your photo with your resume faded away in the late1970s with the civil rights movement and the establishment of ideas of equal opportunity in hiring. Are we taking a step back as we embrace the future with social media job searches?

Few people want a potential employer to pursue them – or disregard them – because of the way they look. Yet, unconscious or even overt inclinations can influence hiring practices. To be very objective in finding the best candidates, hiring managers likely will be combating well documented proclivites towards hiring people who look like them, preconceptions about ethnicity and gender, biases about people who they find attractive or ugly, as well as stereotypes related to age or visible disabilities. You can read more about hiring biases and discrimination online – in essence, studies indicate that people are prone to making quick judgments, having nothing to do with a candidate’s skills and accomplishments.

The question is, how would you feel knowing that someone might not look further into your LinkedIn profile if you don’t have an appealing picture? Do you think that your picture reflects well on you and improves your chance of getting hired? Obviously, even in the past when photos were not readily available, as soon as a candidate showed up for the interview, a hiring manager’s biases regarding the person’s appearance could come into play. But at this point in the hiring process, the job seeker has already impressed the employer with their resume of accomplishments, or their well written cover letter. They have the chance to verbally counter some of the biases based on their looks.

I will continue to look for more information or articles on how hiring practices and biases may be affected now that it is so easy to find a picture of someone online. While I think this newish trend (or retrotrend?) of incorporating photos in professional profiles is not going to change, I do believe that employers can be vigilant in training recruiters to address their biases, and to acknowledge the benefits of diversity in hiring. Here is an example of guidelines developed in the Human Resources industry, which addresses this issue: http://www.shrm.org/TemplatesTools/hrqa/diversity/Pages/default.aspx .

For you the candidate? In addition to being thoughtful of the image you put forward via social media, there are also suggestions for breaking through biases during your interviews: http://www.culturosity.com/articles/interviewbias.htm.

Social Media This Summer

The semester officially ends in just a few more days, but we’re still going to be here at Career Services for you. As the manager of our social media efforts, I’ll still be tweeting, posting on Facebook and LinkedIn, and adding pins to Pinterest. This school year on our social media platforms I focused each week on different career paths or tips to help manage your search, like our Stress Busters focus this past week with finals. This summer is no different, as I’ll continue to have themes. Here’s a glimpse of some of our themes to look forward to this summer:

May 7th to May 11th – Alumni Resources & Staying in Touch. This theme is to celebrate Alumni Weekend and all the commencement ceremonies, where our current students will officially become alumni of Penn. Learn about resources you can utilize after you officially leave campus and how you can stay in touch with your fellow Quakers.

May 21st to May 25th – Summer Professional Development. A big part to any career, and any stage in that career, is professional development. Summer classes start here at Penn on the 21st, so we’re going to look at how to manage an internship and summer classes. We’ll also highlight popular conferences, how to network at conferences and other ways to take advantage of the slower pace many industries experience from May through August.

July 2nd to July 6th – Federal Careers. In celebration of the Fourth of July and our nation’s independence, we’re going to showcase the diverse paths that support our country. We’ll include tips for applying to federal careers, the various programs to take advantage of and what skills you’ll need to succeed.

These are just a few of the themes for Summer 2012, so stay tuned to our social media platforms to see what else I’ll have in store for you!