Do you know where to find valuable information on LinkedIn to make better career decisions?
The benefits of LinkedIn extend way beyond connecting with other professionals and presenting a top-tier profile through which you can market your professional brand. What many people don’t realize is that LinkedIn is a source of game-changing information for your career, that is, if you can find it! Whether you are climbing the corporate ladder or in the midst of some serious career exploration, tapping into content you’ll find within LinkedIn can help you gain knowledge and tools that will support smart career decision making. Where is this information, and how can it help you? To answer those questions you’ll do a little dreaming and then some detective work.
To find information that’s relevant and will facilitate your career development, you first need to dream. That is, think about what you want to achieve professionally. What do you want to do, and where do you want to do it? Identify job titles, industries, or companies that interest you. You can select one or two, or even ten. Then jump in to see what you can find. Try to focus your options initially so you won’t be overwhelmed. What you discover will help you make choices that will guide you along your career path. Sometimes you’ll take small steps, and sometimes you’ll make big leaps. Your speed doesn’t matter. Most important are the quality of the information you find and how you use it to make decisions.
Once you’ve done some dreaming and have identified areas that you find interesting, it’s time to dig deeper. Your first step is to do an advanced search or access your collegiate network using LinkedIn’s Alumni Tool (click on My Network, then Find Alumni). Through those methods you can conduct your search for professionals based on keywords and phrases, or through the six-column search option featured in the LinkedIn Alumni Tool. Once you have identified people in positions, at companies, or within industries that interest you, look beyond their current job titles and responsibilities. First, focus on their career histories. Make note of the paths they followed to their current positions. If you are a young professional or a career changer, what you find in someone’s early work history can spark ideas for your career journey. Next, scroll down through their profiles to the Groups section to identify the groups to which they belong. Groups are a fantastic source of information and network connections that are focused on specific topics. Join groups that are related to your interest areas. They are truly speaking the language of that industry or career field. What you learn will contribute to your professional knowledge base, plus you will identify potential network connections and even job opportunities.
Go beyond job titles and industries to find out what professionals in your field of interest are talking about and see how they have progressed to where you think you may want to go in your career. Once you have started to cultivate and apply this valuable information, don’t stop there! You can reach out to professionals to connect and engage them in informational interviews, and also contribute to the dialogue in your LinkedIn groups through discussion posts and comments. Just take a few steps from where you are now. As you gain knowledge and confidence, keep moving forward. As Lao Tzu stated, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
