While it is very easy to conflate LinkedIn as just another social media platform amongst many of them, LinkedIn has the specific distinction of being a platform geared more towards professionals. What that means is that instead of being a platform to update people on your daily lives, this is a platform to connect specifically from a professional standpoint, like the acquisition of a new job or other business ventures. Just like it is invaluable to have your CV/resume as polished as possible before you go into the professional world, it’s also increasingly important you get into LinkedIn and make polish how people will see you in there.
Here are a couple of reasons why LinkedIn is very important:
Connect to a strong network of professional contacts
The only way to really make any progress in your professional life, whether now or in the future, is not just on what you know, but who you know. Because LinkedIn’s reach can touch every corner of the internet, it is a very important tool for you to start building important connections which can pay off at any moment. Either a future business partner or a job referral, LinkedIn will help you achieve it.
Job Alerts
While you are in the hunt for a job, LinkedIn can be a very useful tool in the process. Sometimes you may not know when a certain company/organization has an available opening, so LinkedIn works as a great tool to notify you when those openings happen. In this day and age, things are becoming easier to find compared to how it was before, so take advantage of the tools available to you.
Build your online persona & prepare for the future
Background checks for any potential future job are part of what employers do before they hire you. One of the things they check immediately is your online presence in social media to see if you’re a person worthy of being hired. Just as it is important that your social media presence is culled from anything they may deem questionable, having a LinkedIn account can immediately bolster your online presence to an employer as it will show you have firm dedication to being in a professional field. Adding to that how you’ll be able to sometimes learn more about a company interested in you in the future thanks to LinkedIn, and this platform can even help you prepare for an interview that way. As you can see, LinkedIn can be a tool that’ll help you more often than not.