How to use LinkedIn to boost your career

Marianne Bom & Rie Jerichow, Publicér

It is a good idea to create a LinkedIn profile while you are still studying. This way, you have a digital business card and are ready to use LinkedIn actively during your career.

You might as well start immediately. Make yourself a LinkedIn profile while you study, and make sure to link up with your co-students. Then you have the foundation for a professional network that you can benefit from during your working life, says Abelone Glahn, who consults about communication on social media.
“Back in the day, you met up with your previous co-students in alumni groups. Now you keep in touch digitally, and why not do it over LinkedIn, where you can notify each other about open positions and draw on each other’s networks,” says Abelone Glahn.
LinkedIn is a global professional network that has more than half a billion users. In Denmark, 2.2 million people show their professional prowess on LinkedIn, and many companies are there as well.

Employers look at your profile

You may think that you, as a student, have nothing to show on your profile. But you do, says Abelone Glahn. “The employers do not expect that you, as a student, have a lot of job experience. But they want to read what you have done during your studies, what competences you have gained, and what fresh and updated knowledge you enter the world with,” she says.
As you gain experience, you should of course update your profile. It is your digital business card that makes it possible for others to find you. They can search for your name, and they will, when reviewing you as a job applicant. They can also search for certain competences, and when you have written the same competences on your profile, you will pop up in their search.

Look into the companies’ lives

A rising percentage of companies have LinkedIn accounts, and you can choose to follow them and get their news in your feed. This helps you stay updated on the developments in the companies you consider working for.
“When something exciting happens with the company, you can make yourself visible by writing a comment,” says Abelone Glahn.
In the comments on LinkedIn, it is best to contribute with something constructive. You can, for instance, contribute with a link to a relevant news story. You can also share your own knowledge, or ask professional questions. Afterwards, it is okay to call the company, refer to their post, and engage in a dialogue, says Abelone Glahn.
On the company pages, the job listings are shown as status updates. But you can also choose to only follow their job listings. You do so by entering their profiles and asking only to be shown available jobs.
“But it might be smartest to get it all, not just the job listings. You should keep up with the company news, so you are ready for the interview,” says Abelone Glahn.
You can also activate a job search on LinkedIn. In the tab called ‘Job’, you can make a search for a job by the criteria you have chosen. You can set up five job agents without paying for a subscription.

Find and share knowledge You may wish to search actively in the enormous amounts of articles and status updates on LinkedIn. Then you should start by setting your navigation language to English. That way, you have the possibility of searching for more content in articles and postings. You make your search targeted by adding quotes around the keywords, for instance “sustainable buildings”.
“This way you will get contents that you can share to your own profile and show that you are knowledgeable and updated. But remember to always write a comment about why what you share is interesting. Otherwise, you are wasting people’s time, and your content may be considered spam,” says Abelone Glahn.
The same goes for liking content. Then it is a good idea to add a comment that qualifies your point of view. However, you can be sure that if you found something that you think is interesting, others will be happy to know it. “Don’t hold back just because you are a recent graduate. There will always be someone who says: “Huh, I never knew that.”.”