Tag Archives: linkedin

LinkingIn

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This weekend, I planned on going to the CMC career fair as my big “career move” of the week. Though the fair stated that there would be employers in government and public policy attending- something that would be helpful for me as a politics major- as I went through the list of companies nearly all the companies were based in finance, something that I’m not interested in the least. I did stop by CP&R to get some pointers about going to the fair, which I plan to test out another time. But this isn’t as a depressing a narrative as it could be – while planning to go the career fair, I decided it was high time to update my LinkedIn.

To be clear, I didn’t create a LinkedIn; I already had one, and it had been sitting around like your weird great aunt’s Facebook. Or Denice posting in the Dollar Tree group.

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I had no connections, and just one meager piece of volunteering information. I didn’t know how to add people. However, I feel like we all have that one friend who isn’t terrified at the thought of networking, and she insisted that I update it. I had also planned to go to the career fair with her, and I thought that if I can’t do it for me, I could at least do it for her.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, setting up a LinkedIn really isn’t that hard, if you have a decent resumé. I don’t have a decent resumé, so before I could do anything, I shaped it up, spending a lot of time finding synonyms for words like “Participated” and “Collaborated.” “Collaborated” is kind of my go to. It just sounds so nice and professional. Say this aloud: The founding father’s collaborated to form the Constitution of the United States. Like, as soon as you throw the word collaborated on your resumé, you’re immediately doing something the founding fathers did! Wild.

Anyway, the actual process of adding things to your LinkedIn isn’t that much different from making an elaborate Facebook account, like you would when you were thirteen and were hell-bent on telling the world your top ten favorite movies. Except instead of your favorite movies, these are actual cool, professional things that you’ve done. And instead of a cute profile picture, you need to have a head shot. Right now, my picture is an awkwardly cropped photo of me from over a year ago, taken on a subpar iPhone camera. I’m hoping that soon, (Maybe even at CP&R’s LinkedIn Photo shoot during Life After Scripps Saturday October 1, 11:00-11:30am- be sure to RSVP on ClaremontConnect as space is limited.) I can convince one of my friends to take a casual photo shoot of me in the rose garden, giving me some better pictures to work with. But until then, this awkward cropping will have to do, though it doesn’t exactly scream “hire me!”
Though I may have my profile down, I’m still trying to figure out the nuances of LinkedIn- like who exactly it’s socially acceptable for me to add. If you need help getting started, CP&R is hosting a LinkedIn workshop Saturday October 1st 10:00am – 11:00 am and you can RSVP on ClaremontConnect LinkedIn may be a stressful part of the career search, but it’s one that does provide me with a weird sense of hope. As I’ve gone over the profiles of recent Scripps graduates, I can see all the amazing things they’ve done, giving me hope that one day, I may be able to do the same.

5 Steps to Starting and Maintaining Professional Relationships

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Here are my top 5 steps to beginning and maintaining professional relationships:

  • An important first step is to think about the network of connections that you already have and may have made in the past. You will be surprised as to how many people that you know are valuable connections and can provide you with a wealth of knowledge and experience. This can be parents, relatives, friends, old colleagues and schoolmates, and even old teachers. Try to reach out to any connections that you have made who may work in a company that you are interested in and rekindle that relationship. Start by sending out a friendly email asking them about how they are doing or mentioning any memory that you have together. You can also talk about important milestones in your work life so that they can remember you on a personal level and you can start a professional conversation.3835
  • As a next step, you can expand your network by using Life Connections to reach out to Scripps alumni. (Life Connections is a volunteer database that offers Scripps College students the opportunity to network with over 1,600 alumnae and friends all over the world. These volunteers have agreed to provide invaluable information about their careers, graduate studies, fellowship experiences, relocation, and job search tips within their areas of expertise.
    • These are the steps to get to life connections:
      • Log into your Scripps Portal
      • Click on the Student tab
      • On the left side of the page, there is a column where you can click on Life Connection
      • You can navigate the database by finding alumni by career, major, employer, or other fields
      • Once you get their contact information from Life Connections, send them emails asking about their jobs or about their Scripps experience. You can also use them to conduct informational interviews (mentioned in a later step)

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  • If you want to network with people in a more personal setting with more face time, then it is important to attend networking events in your area. Go to networking events such as Women in Tech or Undergraduate Summits or conferences that you can find out about through Career Planning and Resources emails. You can also Google different websites to find networking events in your area and your field of study.

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  • Once you start meeting people and creating a network, be sure to add them on LinkedIn to keep these connections for the future. Make sure to send a customized message to every single person you add so they remember you distinctly and can associate you with that message in the future when you reach out to them. You can also interact with articles they share on LinkedIn to show your interest and keep yourself on their radar. If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to check out the Find Alumni search under the “My Network” menu where you can search for Scripps Alumnae by location, company, what they studied and more.

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  • Finally, be sure to conduct informational interviews with anyone that you find interesting in your network. Informational interviews are meetings in which a potential job seeker seeks advice on their career, the industry, and the culture of a potential future workplace, while an employed professional learns about the job seeker. These are helpful in finding out more about industries that you may be interested in while also showing your interest to the employer. These interviews do not need to be stressful and can purely be used to find out more information, but make sure to be prepared with questions and a little background knowledge of the company so that you can make a good first impression.

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Overall it is important to:

  1. Reach out to your old network of connections
  2. Make new contacts through Life Connections and the LinkedIn Find Alumni tool.
  3. Go to networking events for face to face time
  4. Add people on LinkedIn
  5. Conduct informational interviews with people whose work interests you

LinkedIn

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At the end of this summer and my fabulous internship, it was time to get serious about how to update my LinkedIn profile. When I started thinking about LinkedIn, I sat there trying to figure out what exactly LinkedIn is. To start with, I realized that LinkedIn is not necessarily as fun as say, Facebook.  Instead I would personally describe LinkedIn as Facebooks really braggy cousin. Now, there are a lot of websites that out there that tell you various different things about how to “do” LinkedIn properly. Most of us have figured out on Facebook, twitter and Tumbler but LinkedIn is something a bit different and way more scary…

According to LinkedIn, profiles with pictures are more likely to be viewed, with this in mind I decided to start here and to try and take a photo. The first thing, of course, is to look respectable, like a professional. This picture is going to be the first impression anyone looking at your profile is going to have. Not to freak anyone out, but it has become an important social networking tool. When I first decided it was time to finally take a picture for LinkedIn,  had just happened to wear a white and blue jacket with a red shirt. With these clothes on, all l needed was an eagle on my shoulder and I would be ready for a perfectly, patriotic picture for LinkedIn. I decided to change out of my accidently patriotic gear, and stood outside my closet for a long time thinking:

This is an important choice,something interesting, but professional, businesslike but also age appropriate. After finally figuring out what to wear, I had to find a neutral wall. Which was apparently more awkward that I thought it would be. My house does not really have neutral walls, my choices were dark burgundy, an awkward yellow color, or the one white wall against my bed. This had me sitting awkwardly on my bed while my mother took a picture.

Though my LinkedIn picture itself looks good, in reality I look something like this:

 

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I am aware of how well the jacket goes with sock-monkey Pj’s, they really bring out the blue tones in each other. The most important thing that I am business on the top half, though perhaps one should not admit that they were wearing Pj’s in reality.

What You Need to Get a Job

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Yes, this post is a little preemptive; I don’t have a job yet. But I’ve created a pretty good system. Hopefully, you can get some ideas or inspiration!

 Organization

Spreadsheet: I’ve applied for a LOT of jobs and started to lose track, having this spreadsheet made everything so much easier. I used Google Spreadsheets, but I’ve created a mini-version below!
Screenshot 2015-04-27 10.41.14

Dropbox: Save everything to a Dropbox folder. You can get it for free, and trust me when you FINALLY get those accomplishment statements just right, you don’t want to lose them to spilled orange juice on your computer. I use separate folders within my Dropbox to make sure everything is easy to find.

  • Burrito Resumes: CP&R teaches us to make a Giant-Chipotle-Burrito-Resume containing everything we’ve ever done on it, and I have one. However, I also found it easier to have a Recruiting Burrito Resume, HR Burrito Resume, and Diversity Burrito Resume. This way, I just open the one that is most related to the position I’m applying for, save it as the name of the new position and make edits according to the position there. Saves me a lot of time!
  • Current Applications: Any companies that have “Priority Positions” have a folder within Current Applications, which helps me remember what I still have to do.
  • Finished Applications: When I finish an application I move that folder from the Current Applications to Finished Applications and change the name of the folder to the name of the organization and the date (ex. Google (4/24/15)), to help me keep track of when I should follow-up about various jobs.

To Do Lists: I run my entire life through Tasks on my Google Calendar, so that’s no different for job applications. Every Sunday night I look through my priority positions and plan when to apply for each and I factor that into my homework schedule.

Networking

LinkedIn: Use the Advanced Search feature! It helped me find connections I would NOT have found otherwise. Click Advanced Search, enter the company name, and search for current employees. Then when you find a second-degree connection, ask your first degree connection to set up an introduction. Yes, it’s awkward. But I guarantee that it will be worth it. Plus, your LinkedIn connections almost certainly want to help you, or they wouldn’t have connected with you in the first place.

Talking: I mean just what I said, talk to people. Tell your friends, family, and coworkers about jobs you’re applying to or companies that you’re interested in. They might know someone there, they might have other connections, etc. By not talking about it, you could be missing out on those connections!

Back-up

Weirdly, I’m not talking about saving your applications in multiple places (… but do that too please). I’m talking about the people who back you up. Job searches are ridiculously frustrating and disheartening. There are constant ups and downs. Make sure you have those people who are going to scream and jump around your room when you get the interview you’ve been waiting for, and will find a way to get you there, no matter how inconvenient. Don’t try to start a job search without a person who reads every single cover letter to catch all your typos and constantly reminds you to flaunt your accomplishments. Most importantly, you need to have the people you can cry to when everything falls apart. These are the people who will relentlessly remind me that it’s all going to work out, even when it seems more likely that I’ll finally get my Hogwarts letter than have a job by graduation. These people let me mope and watch Netflix when I receive rejection notices, bring me chocolate, and post notes around reminding me that it’s going to work out eventually. I would not have gotten this far in my job search without them; don’t try to do this alone.

10 Things We Need Before Graduation (aka AnnE’s Graduation Registry)

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It occurred to me recently that upon entering the Real World I’ll need to be armed with more than my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. So I’ve been soliciting advice from real live grownups (and created some of my own) about what we actually need to function in the real world.

FOR THE HOME:

1. A George Foreman Grill

I make really excellent cereal and Poptarts, but my talents end there, hence this recommendation. A George Foreman Grill has you covered for everything from a panini to chicken breasts, and BONUS, it’s really easy to clean.

George Foreman Grill

2. A rice maker

Rice is delicious, cheap, great with absolutely any dish, and really easy to make perfectly once you have one of these gizmos. Much adult. Very grownup.

rice cooker

3. A crockpot

Did you know you can just put food in a crockpot in the morning and when you get home you have a meal?! THAT IS SO COOL. This totally feels like cheating at adulthood, but I’m ok with that.

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4. A refined taste in alcohol

When attending a Happy Hour or cocktail party at work, it will no longer be appropriate to request vodka and Redbull, vodka and whatever-Crystal-Light-package-you-have-on-hand, vodka shots with orange juice chasers, or Natty Light. Put the “adult” back in “adult beverages” and learn to order something like a boring glass of wine and refrain from openly gagging when drinking a Manhattan.

5. Renter’s Insurance

This advice comes from one of CP&R’s own career counselors, Lesley Bonds, who watched the ceiling of her apartment fall down onto everything she owned because of a broken water heater in the apartment above her. She spent the next few months on friends’ couches until her apartment was repaired and had to pay for all of it herself. Needless to say, she highly recommends renter’s insurance.

6. Laundry know-how

Yes, this was supposed to be something we learned in college, but we didn’t. So, here’s how to fold a fitted sheet, here’s how to know what spin cycle and temperature to use, and here’s what all of those mysterious symbols on your tags mean.

FOR YOUR CAREER:

7. Financial knowledge

This requirement breaks down into 3 sections: budgeting, investing, and saving. We need to learn to budget because allegedly part of this whole career-thing is that someone is going to give us money every 2 weeks or so, meaning, we’ll need to start keeping track of how we spend it. Here’s a helpful guide for learning to budget (and another) (and another)! As for investing, it may not be as essential as budgeting, but knowledge of the stock market does seem to be one of the topics that is important at boring grownup dinner parties, so we should probably learn about it. (Here are a few other reasons investing might be important, in case you aren’t convinced.) Which brings me to the hard one: saving. As I said, money is going to be put into our account EVERY MONTH. THAT’S SO EXCITING, but according to my budget, I can’t spend all of it on ice cream and Golden Oreos… A lot of that salary is going to need to be saved for future expenditures like vacations and houses, but also for more prudent investments like retirement. This seems like a lot, but we still have 2 months and CP&R regularly hosts finance workshops that I highly recommend!

8. A baby lamb voice

If you aren’t lucky enough to know Grace Ditsworth, this title might not immediately make sense, so I’ll explain: Grace has a voice that can calm any pushy employer, annoyed parent, or overwhelmed student and quickly convince them that everything really will be ok. This voice will be absolutely necessary in any stressful work environment, airline confusion, and family engagements. DO NOT graduate without it. So far, I don’t have any references for how to attain it, but I’m hoping that Grace will teach an EPP class on it soon.

9. An (Updated) LinkedIn Profile

There’s much debate about this, so let me start of by saying, Pre-Med Students: no, I’m not talking to you; please don’t get frustrated with me. Everyone else, why not make one while you can still get help from Valinda Lee (Assistant Director of CP&R and Scripps’ Unofficial LinkedIn Master)? Pros: more and more people are using it these days; networking becomes super easy; and (my favorite part) there’s no one page limit! Cons: yet another thing to do.

FOR GENERAL SURVIVAL:

10. Bravery.

Let’s face it, there’s a theme to my blogs this semester: THE REAL WORLD IS SCARY. We’re leaving our very comfortable Claremont bubble and aren’t really sure about what’s ahead. But, as Rory not-so-eloquently states in the penultimate episode of Gilmore Girls, “There are a just a lot of things right now in my life that are undecided. And that used to scare me but now I kinda like the idea that it’s just all kind of… wide open.” So we’ll need to be brave and gain a sense of adventure.

 

… while keeping our parents on speed-dial and remembering that we can continue to make appointments with CP&R even after graduation.