All You Need To Do Before Looking For Internships on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an incredible platform where you can build your network and develop your career. It has really changed the game for recruiters and applicants alike. Learning how to use it can make searching for internships easier and even fun.
Before we dive in, make sure you first have a LinkedIn account set up (come on folks, this is the obvious first step!). It’s super easy. Just follow the prompts as they come and enter accurate information about yourself. Make sure your full name is real and the email you use is the same one you check regularly and list on your resume.
Once that's done, here is what you should do before you start the internship hunt:
Fix Your Headline
Your headline on LinkedIn is the title that shows up under your name. It gives people an idea of what you do.
The most common headline is [Title at Name of School/Company].
The problem with this headline is that it doesn’t help you stand out. It’s easy to forget.
Instead, consider adding the following to your headline:
- Current status
- Hard Skills
- Industry relevant keywords
- What you’re seeking (an internship!)
- When you’ll be graduating
Click here to see real-life examples of strong LinkedIn headlines.
Should you include all of these? Absolutely not. But including at least the first 2 points (psst.. separate them with a classic pipe ‘|’) will make sure recruiters notice you.
For example:
Student A: Engineering Student at ABC University
Student B: Software Engineer Student | Java, C++, Python | Seeking Internships
If an internship recruiter searches for “software engineer, python, c++”, student B is not only going to show up higher, she will probably be reached out to faster.
Use Visibility Tools and Keywords
Students will often list their experiences without elaborating. A lot of profiles look like this: name, position, previous position, and college the person went to. This doesn't help you show up to potential employers.
Keywords
Just like your strong headline, write a strong about section and describe your responsibilities and achievements in each position in a powerful and keyword-centric way.
Here is a formula you can use to add depth to what you did with keywords:
Action verb + what you did + how you did it + the impact of it
For example:
- Poorly written responsibility statement:
- My team improved the experience of customers who were complaining by tracking previous interactions with them on an Excel sheet.
- Improved statement:
- Worked with a team to create a CRM system that managed all customer interactions resulting in a 55% increase in customer satisfaction.
Remember that simply listing keywords is not a good idea. Providing examples of where you picked up specific skills, the impact of your work, etc. is a much better way to organically introduce keywords. Recruiters can smell generic BS from miles away so keep away from it!
Visibility tools
LinkedIn gives you the power to control what your public profile looks like. This gives you the power to manage your professional brand!
To do this, simply go to the public settings page on LinkedIn and start customizing. You can do the following:
- Edit your LinkedIn URL
- Adjust what is visible to people who are not connections
- This includes what people see if they find you in a Google search
- Create a public profile badge
Customizing your LinkedIn URL makes your profile easier to find. It can also show recruiters that you’re detail-oriented and make an effort. A simple way to get a good custom URL is by creating a variation of your name. To find out more about custom URLs, check out this article from LinkedIn.
Once you’ve customized your URL, it’s time to see what’s visible to non-connections (a.k.a recruiters!). LinkedIn makes it easy to show/hide specific information to the public. You can toggle these options based on what you think is important to display.
As a rule of thumb, make the sections with your strongest keywords public and ensure that whatever is public gives a good overview of your accomplishments and goals.
[infographic on the options]
Finally, consider creating a public profile badge. This is an icon you can generate to add to other websites such as your online resume, portfolio, blog, etc. It adds an extra neat and professional touch to your overall social media presence. Simply click on the option and follow the prompts to get your badge.
Add All Valuable the Work You've Done
Your experiences don’t have to be paid or tied to your school to be worth mentioning!
Here are a few other things you could add to your profile to give people a complete picture:
- Internships
- Freelance gigs
- Extracurriculars
- Part-time jobs
- Volunteer work
- Projects that gave you important skills
- Licenses and Certifications
- Languages
Simply clicking on the + symbol next to your experiences section on your profile can help you add your internships, part-time jobs, and project work.
[Infographic]
Use that powerful sentence structure to describe your work:
Action verb + what you did + how you did it + the impact of it
Next, by scrolling down on your profile, you’ll find a button on the top right that says ‘Add a Section’ to add your volunteer work, languages, extracurriculars, licenses, and certifications.
Build Your Network The Right Way
You can sit for hours hitting the ‘connect’ button on any and every person you find on LinkedIn to boost your numbers. Or you can be smart about it and focus on building high-quality connections.
To do it the smart way:
- Start out by connecting with the obvious people. Your friends, your peers, professors, etc.
- Look for groups on LinkedIn that share the same interests, field, or university as you. Joining those groups can immediately expose you to quality connections.
- To do this, search for your school, major, etc. on the search tab
- Filter the results to only show ‘groups’
- Click on the ones you’re interested in
- Request to join!
- After this, you want to start zoning in on what industries, companies, and internships you care about.
- Then, start finding people who can help you get there.
- Search keywords like this. ‘company name + internship’, ‘Hard skill + Job title’
- Focus on posts, people, and jobs.
- Posts: LinkedIn is THE place to talk about your career accomplishments. This is good for you because it makes it easy to sift through posts to find people to connect with.
- For example, let’s say you searched for ‘Google Internships’
- You found a post of your college senior talking about getting accepted
- You connect with the senior!
- Then you read through the post and find that they tagged the recruiter
- You connect with the recruiter!
- You read the comments and find an intern-turned-employee at the company
- You connect with the employee!
- Jobs: If you find a job posting for an internship you really want. You could consider connecting with the recruiter who made the post.
- We talked a lot about connecting with people, but this comes with a huge disclaimer: it’s important you reach out the right way.
- So when you do reach out, make sure your message contains something that makes it easy for them to respond to and paints you in a positive light.
- For example:
- Hi XYZ! Hope you’re doing well! I read your post/report or watched your Ted Talk on [Topic], and loved [specific parts] because [specific reason]. I’m a [relevant piece of information about you] as well and would love to connect with you and stay in touch!
- Vs.
- Hi! I’m a student at [University]. I see that you work at [Company] and I want to work there too. I am skilled in Java, HTML, C++. I think I would be a great employee or intern for your company.
- The second example reminds us of a mall salesperson running behind customers who are power-walking away, yelling their pitch on the product. It’s not a good look!
- The first example shows that you genuinely care about connecting with this person and have done your research. You are also starting a real conversation with them. This can open up the path to speak more about yourself when the conversation progresses.
And there you have it. The ultimate guide to optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Now, go get that dream internship.