ASSIGNMENT 13: Revised LinkedIn Profile

Peter Steiner, The New Yorker (05 July 1993). Links to an external site.

By now you have identified some general areas to work on within the UW-Madison curriculum that can ehance your "wanderings," build upon your strengths, and lead to clear "challenge-action-result" statements.  And you have started to think about a particular internship, research, or volunteer site that might help you to gain some greater experience.  Now it is time to begin consolidating this information in a more public way to anchor your job search, by revising and enhancing the simple LinkedIn profile you created at the beginning of the semester.

Read this first

• Taking Initiative Student Guide
   chapters 06 and 09, "Social networking Download Social networking
  " and "Diversity, inclusion, and creativity. Download Diversity, inclusion, and creativity.
  "
• Bill Coplin, "Developing your career network," Download "Developing your career network,"
  in 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2012).  Good advice on mixing in technical and soft skills with your major.

Steps to complete

1. Update your existing LinkedIn Links to an external site. profile so it better expresses your personal brand.  Try to fill in as many areas of the LinkedIn interface as you can. You might consider the following changes:

• Upload letters of recommendation you have received (but make sure your recommenders agree to have their references posted in this way first).
• Upload copies of university course assignments or other intellectual products that you are particularly proud of, to use LinkedIn as a sort of electronic portfolio showcasing your best work.
• Upload copies of work projects that you are proud of -- but be careful! Make sure to receive permission first. Instead, you may want to create a "mock up" of a work project that you're proud of, to indicate the scope of what you've done without revealing proprietary or personal information from your previous employer.

2. When you are satisfied with your revised profile, upload the URL of your revised LinkedIn site to show that you have completed this assignment.

Tips for completing this assignment

• While your TA will be the one recording and grading this assignment according to our general rubric -- based on attention to instructions, understanding of course content, effectiveness of communication, and level of engagement -- your discussion section Career Mentor will also take a look at your work, to offer adviser feedback (either individual, group, or both).  Feel free to ask your Career Mentor for advice beforehand!

Questions for discussion

• Search your other online profiles — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, what have you — to see if there are any aspects of your online persona which would deter an employer from hiring you.  How do you think you would be perceived by an employer who searched for you online?

To learn more

• Mark Granovetter, "Introduction" Download "Introduction"
  in Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).  Sociological statement of how social networks connect to the job search, spawning a field.
• Reid Hoffman, Ben Cashnocha, and Chris Yeh, "Tours of duty," Download "Tours of duty,"
  in The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014). This book by the founders of LinkedIn describes how they organize their own firm and how they conceptualize the employer-employee relationship, unfolding in two- to four-year "tours of duty" rather than in lifelong job security.
• Hannah Morgan, "Don't overlook LinkedIn," Download "Don't overlook LinkedIn,"
   The Infographic Resume (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014).  Nice resource for students (especially in statistical or graphic design fields) who would like to use more visuals on their resume and online.
• Orville Pierson, "How hiring really happens," Download "How hiring really happens,"
  in The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006).  A how-to job search guide by a career consultant insider.