Social Media – IT Connect

The Stress-Free Way of Finding a Job

Graduation season is approaching, and for many graduates, while their academic career closes, their professional career is slowly opening its doors. That in itself is extremely stressful – but it doesn’t have to be.

Introducing: LinkedIn.

If you haven’t yet heard of this precious gift, LinkedIn is a professional social-networking
site for creating connections (or “links”) between working professionals, including prospective employees with their desired employers, for example. These connections can occur at numerous levels. While we’ll explore its options in a bit, in layman’s term, it’s a Facebook for professionals, with over 187 million unique visitors per month.

To best describe how LinkedIn works, let’s use this scenario:

You log into LinkedIn and created a profile. This profile is extremely intricate, asking for information regarding education, volunteerism, employment history, honors/awards, projects, skills, interests, etc. You can also upload professional works, such as research papers, artwork, etc.

Once you fill this in (it can take a while), you would then upload a profile photo and launch their customized page, available for other LinkedIn users to see, include friends and prospective employers. However, LinkedIn offers many customization settings, one of them being security, so that you would be able to control how his/her profile is viewed.

Your new profile page essentially serves as a modern, online resume. Deviating from the traditional paper-style resumes, LinkedIn offers you the ability to use this page as a showcase of your abilities and achievements. In fact, many employers will search LinkedIn for candidates, making their profiles the first thing that employers see. As you grow and gain more experience, you’ll start creating “connections,” that is, “friending” working professionals you know on the website. In essence, they serve as your virtual network, being able to endorse you for skills you may have specified, or refer your profile for employment.

How to get started

LinkedIn is such a thorough service that no blog post can truly, comprehensively cover its values and services. Instead, click over to www.linkedin.com and peruse the site, search for profiles, and see if LinkedIn can help you grow in an online, professional setting.

More resources

Thankfully, many online and in-person resources are available for your utilization to make you an efficient LinkedIn user:

The first is a set of eight only tutorials to get started with LinkedIn, available here.

The second, if you are an SMU student, is to visit the Hegi Family Career Development
Center during their drop-in hours. There, experts can guide you to creating and maintaining an exemplary profile, as well as offer other quintessential services for starting your professional career.

And lastly, visit with someone who has a profile already, including, perhaps, your professor! See how they use LinkedIn and what the service has offered them.

Try out LinkedIn today – it may just land you your next job.

P.S. For some fast facts about LinkedIn, click here.

Got a pic? Send a Postagram!

Last week my buddy Ian provided some practical tips for using Instagram. To follow up with his theme I thought I’d share an idea of what you can do with a pic once you have it looking the way you want.

My husband recently took this selfie of us, he edited the photo to give us the glasses, and then posted it online. I liked it so much that I wanted to make a card out of it to surprise a dear college friend, so she would know I hadn’t actually forgotten her birthday. Below is my “Here’s celebrating you!” birthday postcard. Truth be told, I’m lousy at taking the time to shop and send cards, but this was so quick, easy and fun that I had to do it.

Postagram allows you to send your photos as real postcards. And let’s face it, in this day and age with technology and social media taking over, every once in a while you want to get some fun snail mail! So, if you’re getting ready for that next vacation or spring break trip, why not use one of your own photos as a postcard?

You can download the app (available on android or iphone) or upload photos to the postagram. Photos need to be .PNG, .JPG or .GIF , should be at least 612 x 612, and can’t exceed 8MB. If you are using the app, simply select your photo or login to Instagram, Facebook, or Dropbox to get your pic. Then, crop and scale your photo and hit continue.

Finally, personalize your postcard message and click continue. Once you do, you’ll be directed to your contacts. You can select a recipient from your address book or enter a new address if needed.

I guarantee you, send one of these and you’ll make someone very happy! By the way, while I’m talking about taking and posting pics, consider sending us your favorite Valentine themed SMU pic @smuoit in our Valentine photo contest. We’d love to see who and what you love at SMU!