LinkedIn: A Leg Up for New Graduates

For those of us who will be finishing our degrees in the next few years, the likelihood of receiving a diploma on Saturday and starting work on Monday is pretty much out of the question. We’ll be lucky if we can get a call back from Starbuck’s. How can one get a leg up on the competition and start building business relationships that can help us grab those jobs we so desperately need to pay off those student loans; start getting connected. LinkedIn is becoming the best way to get a jump start into the business world.

LinkedIn is a social media site created specifically for those in the business world or those wanting to further their careers. Once a member, you can start aquiring different business connections, sales leads and searching job listings. As of 2013, the website has over 175 million visitors per month in over 20 countries (Quantcast). That’s a lot of lot of business connections. You can create an account in about ten minutes and start building a network of different connections. These connections are like the “friends” you have on Facebook; some of them are family, some are people you knew in high school and others are people you have never met, but hope to get your name noticed by them so they may think of you in the future when they open that new office in your town. It’s a great way to look for jobs since you can search by companies where one of you connections either works for or knows somebody who works there.

I have been a member of the site for several years now and would say it has helped my career a great deal. As a business consultant, it is very important to have the right business connections when looking for my next project. I am able to connect with other consultants I have met on previous projects and a lot of times they drop my name while working on new projects. Since joining the site, I have gained numerous new business leads and dozens of job offers.

So as a forty something business guy who has been in the work force for a while, my advice to young college graduates would be get those business connections started early.