Why You Should Be on LinkedIn

As a young professional, LinkedIn has been one of the most useful tools for marketing myself as an employee but also to find new potential employers and job opportunities. LinkedIn allows you to connect with professionals from all over and tailor your experience on the platform to what you are looking for in a job or what you’re interested in learning about in the business world. There are many benefits to not only being on LinkedIn but also being active and Jason McDonald touches on some key points of success when it comes to LinkedIn. 

One of the most overlooked features of LinkedIn by new users is the groups you can join. Groups are a way to get connected with people from all over who are interested in the same things as you without connecting to a bunch of people you don’t know or have interest working for. Groups are like forums for specific areas of business. Some groups even require a short application process to make sure you are interested and to keep relevant users involved in their discussions and posts. 

Another good reason to start a LinkedIn account is the professional environment. You can easily search new businesses, employers or connections to a company on Facebook, but Facebook can be laid back and sometimes a bit unprofessional. LinkedIn remains professional in all aspects and McDonald goes on to describe it as a 24/7 corporate party. That corporate aspect remains while using LinkedIn. It goes unstated but with this manner of professionalism, a professional profile picture goes a long way when potential employers are taking a look at your profile. 

Similar to Facebook, the news feed on LinkedIn allows users to see content posted by businesses or other users. You can either be connected to the owner of the content or be connected with someone who is engaged in the post (like, comment, share). This allows the post to come onto your feed where you can choose to engage in the post or ignore it. Secondary connections can be very useful in this process allowing you to find more people to connect with. Your news feed is tailored just for you and is manipulated by who you connect with and what businesses you follow as well. These determine the content you see on a daily basis.

Obviously social media is huge in today’s society. Most people my age have many different social media accounts. With that being said, my friends that I have talked to do not have LinkedIn accounts and some haven’t even heard of the platform at all. I can’t really blame them because I hadn’t even considered making one until I had to for an assignment in class and now out of all of my social medias, LinkedIn definitely gets the most use.