HCC LinkedIn workshop shows how to maximize online networks
Sep 21, 2017
Maybe you’ve heard about LinkedIn before from your colleague at work or a friend who’s hunting for a new job. But, how does it work? More importantly, do you know how to put it to work for you?
The Houston Community College (HCC) Office of Entrepreneurial Initiatives and Innovation Student Club hosted a Creating an Effective LinkedIn Profile workshop led by Karthik Rajas, Houston’s top LinkedIn blogger.
“There are three things I hope attendees take away from this workshop,” Rajas said. “Smile in your profile picture and use a plain background, build relationships with people both digitally and in person, become an online magnet and attract people with your tagline and summary.”
HCC students, staff and community members packed the HCC Brays Oaks Center computer lab for the informative two-hour workshop session.
“I learned about LinkedIn and how important it is to have,” said Samantha Lona, an HCC computer science student. “I understand the importance of having a good tagline, summary and a profile picture. I have an organization, so I will use LinkedIn to get more people interested in what the organization is doing.”
Sharon Young from Southwest Houston 2000, a coalition of nonprofit, religious, business and homeowner’s associations, said she hoped others will use the social media skills they learned to promote their organizations.
LinkedIn has become one of the most popular social networking platforms.
According to the LinkedIn Workforce Report for Houston, hiring on LinkedIn has increased 19.1 percent in June 2017 versus June 2016. Rajas says LinkedIn is for anybody and everybody who's interested in finding new opportunities to grow their careers and to connect with other professionals. A completed LinkedIn profile with keywords in both the tagline and summary, Rajas says will appear more times in search results and recruiters are more likely to find the profile.
Gone are the days of mailing in a paper resume, thanks to this type of technology and innovation. LinkedIn is connecting job seekers with potential employers with just the click of a mouse. In a 2015 survey done by Jobvite Social Recruiting, 92 percent of recruiters use social media in their recruitment efforts, from hiring a first-year college student to a marketing executive for a major company and 87 percent are using Linkedin, more than any other social media platform.
Creating a powerful LinkedIn profile will get you noticed. For more information, visit hccs.edu/smallbusiness.