LinkedIn is an online, professional networking website, and as its name suggests, its primary purpose is to connect people. For juniors and seniors in high school creating a profile helps them to make connections with others globally, whether it is in their future field of study, prospective colleges and universities, or areas of interest. Since the minimum age requirement to use LinkedIn is 16, most junior and senior high school students can, and should, use it.
How LinkedIn Helps Connect With Others
- It keeps a record of their achievements and helps them develop an appropriate “showcase” mindset.
- It helps students to build an academic, professional, and interest-related network.
- It allows students to connect with others in a professional capacity, follow people of influence, post articles, comment, and “like” things on their own or other user pages.
- By acknowledging the school they attend or have attended, students can become a part of an alumni network and maintain long-term relationships with people associated with their school journey.
- It allows students to create a virtual resume and to start collecting online skills endorsements, and written recommendations.
- Students can publish content, engage with their newsfeed, explore colleges, companies, and individuals and even find mentors who will be able to provide guidance and support as they journey forward.
- Students can gain a competitive edge by maintaining a polished LinkedIn profile and by connecting with colleges and building a network of contacts such as admissions officers, professors, and the like at specific colleges and universities.
- Linkedin can help students decide which school is right for them by visiting college and university pages, following their posts, and gaining insights into each school, the campuses, programs, and events. Students can even connect with current students as well as graduates, including where they’re working after graduating.
- By using LinkedIn’s alumni feature students can connect with potential hiring managers and since many organizations list remote internship opportunities on LinkedIn students can go to the Jobs tab and search for internships that may help get their career off to a good start.
- A student’s LinkedIn connections will “link” them to others around the globe, and these connections will continue to evolve and grow for the rest of their career.
How To Stay Actively Involved On LinkedIn
Joining LinkedIn is of no use, however, if students do not use it to its potential. To reap the benefits of this robust professional network students need to log on and spend time engaging by:
- Sending connection requests to their parents, classmates, friends, relatives, teachers, mentors, coaches, and other adults they know, especially those in their areas of interest.
- Checking messages and responding.
- Reading notifications for news about anyone in their network.
- Liking and responding to posts from people in their network.
- Updating their profile by adding new awards, extracurriculars, internships, jobs, volunteer work, skills, courses, and projects as well as deleting any information that is no longer relevant.
- Taking advantage of LinkedIn’s “Featured” section to highlight the key elements of a college application.
- Making the best use of LinkedIn’s aggregated data feature to research the colleges that companies tend to hire from (explore the “people” tab) while also researching colleges to discover their most marketable majors (explore the “alumni” tab).
How To Open A LinkedIn Account
LinkedIn has an excellent resource that will help students to Build A Great Student Profile and a very useful Checklist that will ensure that students have completed all the necessary requirements that will best showcase them to the world.
Another exciting feature of LinkedIn is LinkedIn Learning where students can learn “in-demand skills through over 16,000+ online courses taught by real-world professionals“. Three essential courses that will help get every student started are:
High school is the perfect time for students to start engaging with LinkedIn so that they can build an online professional presence and develop the foundations of a network that will be an invaluable resource as they stride confidently into the future.