LinkedIn and Twitter Lab

Helen Buzdugan

University of Manchester

9 June 2011

#agcasemid

• Ways of using LinkedIn and Twitter with students – helping you to help them!

• Some ideas from me and hands-on practice

• Sharing our ideas, experiences and tips as we go along

• Time for questions!

Objectives

Where are you on the social media novice to guru scale?

A) I wouldn’t know a tweet from a twit!B) I know a bit about Twitter and LinkedIn but

haven’t really used them muchC) I’ve joined fairly recently and created my

profiles and started to try a few thingsD) I’ve been using these for a while now and am

pretty competent, but feel I could always learn more

E) My colleagues call me the Careers Service’s “social media guru”!

Session 1:

Lab

Ways I use LinkedIn professionally

Some recent examples:• Careers professional in US shared her ‘LinkedIn lab’

session with me• Joined ‘Go-Social’ LinkedIn group and attended

‘traditional’ networking event – made some useful contacts

• ‘Recruited’ alumnus now working at Department for Work & Pensions for our ‘Careers in Politics’ panel event

• Was contacted by Canadian careers adviser moving to the UK who wanted advice on getting a job here

• Was contacted by a law firm wanting to advertise a vacancy with us

Ways I use LinkedIn with students

• Exploring job roles – what job titles are there in x and what organisations do people in x work for

• Researching career trajectories to see how people get into a desired role

• Identifying organisations to target (by sector or location)

• Researching organisations – e.g. what sort of people do they employ, where do they have offices

• Identifying contacts to target for ‘informational meetings’ or work experience

• Developing contacts for working overseas• Unlimited potential…

The LinkedIn profile

Elements in your profile:• Basic info: title, summary, specialities, experience,

education, links to blogs/Twitter/websites etc, honours and awards, interests, personal info., contact settings,

• Additional info: recommendations, groups, blog feed, Amazon reading list, Slideshare presentations etc

Example careers people profiles:• www.linkedin.com/in/helenbuzdugan • http://www.linkedin.com/in/pcharman

1: Building your LinkedIn profile

Work on some of the following, as relevant:• Write an appropriate title

e.g. ‘Careers Adviser at the University of X, specialising in supporting international students’

• Write a keyword-rich summary and add some specialities• Include details of your education and previous employment• Consider who you might approach for recommendations• Add your Twitter account and a link to your blog or careers

service website• Set up your ‘public profile’ (i.e. simple web address)• NB: You can add a photo later

2: Identifying organisations

Scenario

A student wants to get some publishing work experience back home in Brighton over the summer and wants help with identifying publishers to target. They’ve tried the usual Google search but not got too far.

LinkedIn task

Do an advanced company search, using location ‘Brighton’ and sector ‘Publishing’. What would you then suggest students do with this list?

3: Researching organisations

Scenario

A student has an interview with a PR company called Amaze, and wants to find out more about them.

LinkedIn task

Do a basic company search for ‘Amaze’. Look especially at ‘insightful statistics’ and profiles of employees. How could you/students use this data? Experiment with searching for other companies. Can you find any big graduate recruiters?

4: Identifying contacts

Scenario

A student is considering a career in football coaching. You suggest identifying some contacts in your area for ‘informational interviews’ initially.

LinkedIn task

Do an advanced people search using the keyword ‘football coach’ and select the industry ‘Sports’. Look at the available profiles and see if you can identify any suitable contacts.

NB: If you managed to join the sports-related LinkedIn groups as advised prior to the training, you should see a good list of results here.

5: Researching an area of workand career paths

Scenario

A student is interesting in doing something to do with equality and diversity (or CSR) but doesn’t know what roles exist and what organisations might employ such people.

LinkedIn task

Do a people search using just the keywords ‘equality and diversity’ or ‘CSR’ and perhaps location ‘UK’ to find UK specific jobs. Look at people’s profiles. What different jobs have they done? Who did they work for? What did they study etc? NB: You might need to join a relevant group to view full job profiles here, but otherwise just look at their basic profile to get an idea.

LinkedIn groups• Joining groups is important for students to

expand their network of contacts• Can automatically view most profiles of (and

send message to) people in same groupTips:• Useful for you to join groups to show students

on your profile• See if groups are UK specific (no location search

yet but can enter ‘UK’ as a keyword)• Look for high membership groups• Change your settings for the group to ‘weekly

digest’ or de-select the Digest email box

LinkedIn – useful groups to join

Types of groups include:• Careers professionals groups• Graduate recruiter/business groups• Local/regional networking groups• University alumni groups• Sector specific groups• Company alumni groups

NB: See handout for some specific groups you might be interested in

6: Joining LinkedIn groupsLinkedIn task

Do a basic group search and use relevant keywords to search for graduate recruiter groups, sector-specific groups, alumni groups or careers professionals groups to join. If you have time, look at some of the discussions in the groups you are already a member of.

NB: You can join up to 50 LinkedIn groups, and groups can be useful for:

– Asking questions and sharing experiences (especially the careers professionals and graduate recruiter groups)

– Sourcing speakers for events– Promoting Careers Service events, services and

resources etc (e.g. your university’s alumni group)

Most common questions from students

1. What can I put in my LinkedIn profile as I’m ‘only a student’?

Example student profile:www.linkedin.com/in/samuelroutledge

2. How can I make contacts on LinkedIn?

How students can contact people via LinkedIn

• Check if the person has a Twitter profile (if so, consider making contact via Twitter first)

• Check their contact settings for ‘expertise requests’• Usual networking rules apply!• Approach more junior people first, not CEOs• Ask for advice initially; perhaps an ‘informational

interview’ – can lead to work experience and perhaps even a job

• There is a word limit for messages to anyone who is not a direct contact (e.g. group contact) – a short paragraph

• Also consider starting discussion in a relevant group

6 of my favourite things about LinkedIn

1. You can see who your 2nd and 3rd degree contacts are2. You don’t have to already know people to start building

your network on LinkedIn3. You can keep in touch with people even when they

change jobs (or we can keep in touch with students after guidance appointments and see what they do when they graduate…)

4. There’s no blurring of personal and professional – it’s ALL professional

5. You can dip in and out of it as you need to (but the more you put in, the more you get out)

6. Is it 6 degrees of separation, or just 3…?

In summary… to get started with LinkedIn

• Complete your own profile as fully as possible• Join some relevant groups (can join up to 50)• Join in some group discussions• Find some of your own students or recent

graduates on LinkedIn as examples• In my experience, students need to be shown

how to search LinkedIn for contacts, organisations etc (so it helps to be familiar with it yourself first)

LinkedIn – useful links

• Refer students and graduates to:http://grads.linkedin.com (5 useful short ‘getting started’ videos)

• Example student profile:www.linkedin.com/in/samuelroutledge

Session 2:

Lab

Twitter• 200+ million users worldwide

(but not all are regular, active users)• 155 million tweets per day• 50% of users are 18-34

(so students and graduates are a key group)• BUT Only 18% of University of Manchester

students and grads used Twitter ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ (Survey of 747 students/grads, 2010)

Twitter – the basics …• Tweeting (use a link shortener like

http://tinyurl.com to shorten long web links)• Searching• Following people• Lists, e.g.

www.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-people or www.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-services

• Using hashtags (#) e.g. #agcaslab • Replies (@) and direct messages (DM)• Retweets (RT)

Twitter scenario

A student is interested in getting into publishing and she is keen to get some work experience and find out more about opportunities. In what ways could she use Twitter to help her?

• Follow people and organisations that tweet publishing jobs using the Twitter search function for keywords and then by following other people’s lists.

• You can help your students by setting up lists for different sectors and encouraging students to follow them. E.g. www.twitter.com/helenbuz/publishing-careers

Suggestions – part 1

Suggestions – part 2

• Follow people working in publishing. Observe them for a while and see what sorts of things they tweet about.

• Re-tweet interesting things and comment on the industry news – try to sound like a “professional in development”.

• As you start to build up a following, join in conversations.

• If you have a blog, link to that and your LinkedIn profile, and feed your blog posts onto Twitter so that people following you on Twitter can see examples of your ideas and your writing.

Poor spelling - bad impression?

Is username appropriate?May be

funny, but...

Recent tweet

Blog

*NEW(ish)* Fusing social networking and job search

• The job search engine Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.co.uk) connects with your Facebook or LinkedIn contacts to show you if you have any contacts (even 2nd or 3rd degree) in organisations advertising vacancies

Contact

Helen BuzduganCareers Consultant, with special responsibility for web and

interactive technologies)MLP, Careers & Employability DivisionUniversity of Manchester, UK

• Email: helen.buzdugan@manchester.ac.uk • Phone: +44 161 275 2828 (careers switchboard)• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/helenbuzdugan • Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenbuz • Slides available at: www.slideshare.com/helenpownall