LinkedIn Guide

• Use a high quality photo looks professional
  • Do not use any cropped photos or selfies
• Schedule an appointment at the Career Connections Center to have a professional headshot taken

In your Summary Section, you should:

• Include foundational human skills and technical skills that are needed for your field
• Show your personality and you as a professional (value add/what makes you different/your brand)
• Remember to include keywords Search for the best practices in your industry and what others are doing, and be inspired by that research when writing your own summary
• Quantify your experiences to show productivity and results (how often, how much, percentages, size, amount, etc.)

• Include university (University of Florida), degree, field of study, the year that you started and the year you will
• graduate, main activities and societies from your involvement experience
• You can display educational work in this section or consider creating a separate projects section.

• Expand on your work/involvement/leadership experience sections from your resume
• Expand on your work/involvement/leadership experience sections from your resume
• Elaborate and go deeper when describing your experiences on LinkedIn
• Include job/leadership title, company/organization name, key accomplishments, and dates worked/participated
• If you held a leadership position, be specific about what your responsibilities were and how they affected your organization
• Include 2 or more detailed bullet points about what you did/your impact on the company/organization (need to make in Word and copy and paste into LinkedIn)
• Quantify when possible (use numbers to highlight your accomplishments)
• If you have volunteer experience, you can also add that under the “volunteer experience” section
• If using bullet points, they should include action verb + how/what you did + results
• Focus on transferable skills in your industry
• Find transferable skills using task from job titles you searched on O*Net Online
• Note: LinkedIn will automatically sort your experiences by most recent (at the top) to least recent (at the bottom)

• Volunteering
• Projects (courses, organizations, or independent)
• Recommendations
• Study Abroad
• Skills and Endorsements
• Interests
• Courses
• Honors and Awards
• Languages
• Organizations/ Companies
• Groups
• Alumni Associations

• Log in to your LinkedIn profile
• Click on LinkedIn profile
• On the top right-hand side, there will be an “Edit public profile & URL” section
• Click the pencil icon
• Edit the URL to be only your name or similar to your email (this creates a consistent professional brand)

• Set Your Profile to “Open to Work”; This helps recruiters recognize that you are interested in new opportunities
• Add sample job titles, workplaces, job locations, start date, and job types
• Select if you want only recruiters to see this information or all LinkedIn users
• Ensure you save your settings update by clicking the save button

• Go to the search bar and search for a preferred role (ex. Software engineer internship, account manager, public policy internship, etc.)
• Make sure to include keywords such as “internship”
• Then click the job icon on the top to get job/internship postings
• Filters:
  • When the results appear, click on all filters
  • Set the filters to match the opportunities you are searching for
  • Do not forget to filter by location if it is applicable to you
• Understand and research your reasonable salary and location preferences
  • To receive notifications when new jobs are released with the title you searched, click the “set alert” toggle to “on”
• If you want to save a job to apply to later, click the ribbon icon next to the “Save” button

• Recommended Jobs: based on jobs you have already applied to and your listed experience/skills
• Interview Prep Tab: has common interview questions (you will need a premium account to access all the questions)
• Another way to find jobs/internships is by connecting directly to recruiters and employees in target organizations

• Search for the company/organization of interest
• Click on the company’s LinkedIn profile
• Click the about section
• Click on the “I’m Interested” button
• Clicking the “I’m interested” button allows recruiters at that company/organization to know you are interested in working there

• Always send a note with your connection request. This greatly increases your chances of a successful connection.
• Your note should be personal and meaningful, yet short
• Remember to use a friendly and professional tone
• Thank the person for taking the time to talk to you (if applicable)
• Be concise with your word choice
• Keep language formal, but easy to understand

• Start with introducing yourself and share a point of connection (i.e. UF alumni; same industry; if you have talked to the recruiter before, mention what you talked about)
• Give a call to action for what you’re looking for (i.e. I am hoping to to speak to you about…; questions regarding x, y, z)
• Ensure you are time and calendar courteous to make it easier on a recruiter or individual to be able to respond
• Thank them for connecting/time/opportunity
• Add a sign-off such as “Sincerely” or “Best,” followed by your name just like you would in a professional email

• Search “University of Florida”
• Click “University of Florida,” then click the “Alumni” Tab
• Then search keywords relevant to your work including organizations they work for, job titles, etc.
• Once you populate a search, it displays the UF alumni that meet that criteria or have those keywords in their profile
• You can use this to connect and network with specific alumni

• UF gives students the opportunity to earn some certifications from LinkedIn Learning for free. This resource
• is a great experiential learning opportunity for students to learn outside the classroom and upskill.
• You can find this link by searching “LinkedIn Learning UF”
  • https://elearning.ufl.edu/supported-services/linkedinlearning/
• Create/Sign in with your LinkedIn Account
• On the screen that says “Continue to the University of Florida LinkedIn Learning Account” click the blue box that says “Continue to the University of Florida”
• Login with your UF credentials

• Select the browse button in the top left corner of the screen
• Select the Certifications button
• From there, you can click on either professional certifications and/or certification preparation and save the topics that interest you