5 COLLEGE STUDENT Objections to Joining LinkedIn
While it is true that some college students may be beyond help, below are some excuses you can meet head on. To support students, my connections exceed over 2,000 which connect me to over 17 million on LinkedIn. I use my connections to help both high school and college students find people in their career of interest as part of the Career Coaching for Students program (high school program or college student program).
1. “Creating a LinkedIn profile takes too much time” is a common complaint; however, creating a profile is actually a motivational exercise. Students can easily copy and paste their résumé to their LinkedIn profile and revise it from there. Once their profile starts to fill out, they begin to feel better about their developing profile.
2. “I don’t have time to add a LinkedIn update once a week?” Posting an update once a week is not that hard to do. With most students now on Facebook and Twitter, posting an update takes the same effort. It’s as simple as commenting on a topic such as something interesting being covered in a core course that aligns with your career direction, attaching an article, posting a great quote, letting people know what you are up to, etc.
3. “I don’t think people in my occupation use LinkedIn” might have been a valid point two or three years ago. Some occupations, namely the trades, were slower to jump on the LinkedIn wagon. Today, people in all industries and all types of work are on LinkedIn. With the number of connections I have, I love taking friendly bets on this false perception. I’ve won every bet.
4. “There’s no way I can get 50 connections” is an interesting challenge. LinkedIn allows users to download contacts from their e-mail account from the beginning of registering for membership. One just has to select the members they want to invite and soon acceptances and invites will come their way. An exercise I do with high school and college students is to have them write down on a worksheet everyone they know (friends, extended family, parents of friends, professional contacts). I then poll everyone to see how many they wrote down. In a 5 minute time limit, the average student writes down between 30 and 50 names. I then ask them if it is reasonable to expect each person they wrote down to have the same number of contacts. We then do the math. Using the least (30), the math looks like this: 30 x 30 = 900. Each of us can easily get something between our direct contact count and the 900 within one week. For college students, making this a competitive challenge with a reasonable $$ prize for the highest number of contacts after one week generates amazing results.
5. “I’m just a college student.” LinkedIn will most likely not offer immediate gratification. This isn’t a sprint; it is more like a marathon. The smartest students will invest in the time to begin their lifelong network. They’ll be ahead of their classmates and will most likely receive more interviews and offers when the time comes for the payout.
Carl Nielson is an organizational development consultant, professional career and executive/leadership coach and creator of the nationally recognized program Career Coaching for Students™ . Career Coaching for Students is available as a district-wide high school program, college program and in group and on-one-one offerings through certified career coaches throughout the United States, Canada and other countries. Contact Carl Nielson at carl@successdiscoveries.com or call 972-346-2892 to discuss specific needs. Or visit us at http://www.careercoachingforstudents.net
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