Our career intern Paul Danenberg ’23 shares takeaways and tips from the Rock Your LinkedIn Profile workshop with Ruthie Hertzberg ’13.

Networking has quickly become one of the most important ways undergraduate students secure competitive internships and jobs, with LinkedIn being among the most popular networking sites. Did you know it is now the 9th most trafficked website? 

Ruthie Hertzberg, a 2013 Bucknell Alumna, works within LinkedIn’s enterprise services, where she helps companies ranging in size from 500 to 5,000 employees. She helps these companies with their recruitment, marketing, and hiring strategies to help them attract the best talent pipelines. 

Ruthie recently held an exclusive session for Bucknellians to learn how to best utilize LinkedIn, your new living resume, where she covered topics including how to demonstrate your personal brand and network with those you’re interested in meeting. The vision of LinkedIn is to “create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”. It’s here to help you connect with others, stay informed, and get hired!

Most Important Parts of Your Profile

1. Add a profile picture: Those with a profile picture get 21x as many profile views than those who don’t. It can be as simple as a picture of yourself from shoulders-up with a neutral background and professional clothing. 
2. Add a summary: This can be looked at as your elevator pitch – what you would say to show your skills and experiences in about 100 words. 
3. Add your education: This includes awards, clubs, sports, and any other activities outside of your major/minor. 
4. Add your work experience: Those with experience are 10x more likely to get messaged, especially those with a description of what they accomplished. If you have a job at Bucknell, you can add that too.
5. Add your volunteer experience, accomplishments, skills, and interests: Although this may be near the bottom of your profile, employers most definitely look. Students who add 5+ skills can receive up to 17x more profile views. LinkedIn now offers skill quizzes, where you can prove you have the skills you claim to, which makes them much more powerful.
6. Request recommendations: If you have worked with someone (manager/coworker/etc.) and you feel comfortable asking them, they have the power to write you a recommendation. 

Adding these items can greatly improve your chance of not only having your profile viewed, but also receiving a message through LinkedIn. If you get “writer’s block” as you add these to your profile, start searching around for others on LinkedIn in the industry you hope to join. Also, look for the individuals who have the position you want, the companies you want to work for, and any related business news or articles. These sources should give you some keywords and information to consider using in your profile. Keywords will help recruiters find your profile for relevant positions as well as improve the open positions LinkedIn presents to you privately.

If you’re looking to even further demonstrate your interest in a particular topic area, LinkedIn Learnings offers professional videos about a variety of topics, everything from financial modeling to building resilience as a leader.

What’s Next?

Before you reach out, give your profile one last look over (or even meet with a CCA counselor!) as well as ensure you feel comfortable with your privacy settings. Personally, I believe “Visibility” under the “Settings and Privacy” tab is of the most important. This allows you to adjust not only who can see certain aspects of your account, but also can be adjusted for how other LinkedIn users can see your activity on their accounts. 

Now that you have your profile built and are ready to reach out, where do you start? As I and many others have found, Bucknell Alumni are the perfect place to start! They are of the most willing individuals to be a support system for you and can help you guide potential career paths. 

For a lasting tip, don’t wait until you need the job. LinkedIn is here to help you create, build, and, most importantly, nurture connections. Those who you reach out to early, stay in touch with, and build a friendly and personable relationship with will be the ones most likely to help you later on in your application process. For me personally, a finance major pursuing investment banking, I have heard from many of my peers that starting early can greatly increase your chances of receiving an internship offer. Even if you’re currently a first-year, that leaves you ~2 years to make very strong and powerful connections.

To learn more about creating job alerts, joining groups, following companies, and more on LinkedIn, I would highly recommend watching the recording of Ruthie’s session on our Moodle page. Whether you’re new to LinkedIn or have been a part of it for years, this session will provide advice and professional tips helpful for anyone.