Whether you are a fresh college graduate or a seasoned professional, career success is always a continuous process. At times, it’s even better to create your own career (or job) rather than finding one. Using LinkedIn effectively is one of the best approaches in today’s digital era if you want to achieve career success.

Creating your career or job might sound far-fetched for some of you (while others have already done it, including me) but it’s very possible. I agree it’s not too easy in today’s competitive job market. But, in the modern era of digitization, it’s not difficult by any means.

Currently, LinkedIn is the largest professional networking platform in the world with more than 59 million monthly users in India and 300 million monthly active users worldwide. As of late 2018, LinkedIn had more than half a billion members in more than 200 countries, including executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. As you might know, networking is the most effective job search strategy.

These days, if you are not on LinkedIn, then you basically don’t exist. LinkedIn is a great platform to network with industry leaders, recruiters, and current & former employees of an organization. There are several blog posts on how to utilize LinkedIn effectively. In this post, guest writer Megha Pathak writes about leveraging LinkedIn to create your own career. Megha is a B.Tech. Computer Science Student (will be graduating in 2021) and currently based out of Jaipur.

Don’t Just Find, Create Your Career – A Student’s Perspective about Leveraging LinkedIn

By Megha Pathak

Start with Creating a Strong Personal Brand

Your favorite footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is a brand.

Your favorite celebrity Beyoncé is a brand.

Starbucks is a brand.

You are surrounded by brands that you trust and know for their personality, work or service.

Guess what? You are a brand yourself!

When it comes to the career-building process, students find themselves stuck in different kind of dilemmas. Which is the right career of them? How do they find it?? What is the skillset required?

This is the story of every other student. One idea to convert all dilemmas into confidence is for students creating their Personal Brand.

Begin the game of figuring yourself out!

When students build their unique brands, they’re not only marketing their skills, achievements, and strengths but also their personality, ambitions, and values. LinkedIn is heaven for anyone trying to establish their Personal brand.

Right from “What do I want to do in my career” to “How should I do it”, I’ve found and still find all of my answers through LinkedIn. You can too.

Read how to use your time effectively as a college student for career success.

But, What does a student get from Personal Branding?

Irrespective of whatever stage you are in your career building process, there is always a WAY to find your thing and ace further with it. All you need is the right guidance, freedom to explore and opportunities to prove yourself. These three are the keys to answer “What a Personal Brand give to students?”

When you understand the WHY part, the major work is done because the one who understands the WHY automatically gets followed by the curiosity to know the WHAT and the HOW part.

Though there are thousands of reasons for why students need a Personal Brand. These are the major 3 reasons that you need to know to kickstart your journey.

Read resume writing tips for college students and fresh college graduates.

Cut the competition noise off. Stand Out of the crowd!

As we all know, the competition is extremely fierce. Not only are you competing against thousands of other applicants from the most prestigious schools in the world but also against those who might have all of the right experiences too. You’re competing against those who claim they are the “smartest person in the room.”

So what sets you apart?

There is a one-word answer: INDIVIDUALISM.

Because at the end of the day, no one shares the same story as you do and branding yourself is your chance to share that story, to attract attention to your brand.

When you work arduously to share your journey & passions, network with others, and help others, extraordinary things can happen.

Read how to stand out in the competitive job market.

Visibility and Credibility

Being a student, you need to create opportunities yourself. Your personal brand helps you to shift the gear of your career from Seeking Opportunities to Creating Opportunities. This may seem a bit like an exaggerated and idealistic line but it is all true.

I have experienced this gear shift myself, seen others experiencing it, and made other more students experience it too. The opportunity you create seeks you, not the other way around.

Your Visibility is your existence in this Digital World!

No matter whatever you want to do in your career – get a job, start a business or startup. You always need people to who recognize you for the work you do. You ALWAYS need to build credibility.

Credibility is Dynamic!

Nothing worth is built neither does credibility. You should consistently keep showing your target audience what are you are doing consistently that makes you good at in whatever you do.

Read resume writing, personal branding, job search, and career tips by HR-Recruitment Professional.

Community and Feedback

A programmer needs feedback. A marketer needs feedback. A speaker needs feedback.

All of us need feedback on the work we do. But, can a music composer can give feedback to a backend developer about the optimizations he can make in his code?

No, right?

You need to find and interact with the people of your niche to get ahead of your mark. Your ideas and actions become louder with your community. Even if you don’t find your like-minded people in your physical surroundings, your personal brand makes it easy for you to seek them online.

The world is your dataset, extract whatever you want to!

This is just the gist of Personal branding. There are always more whys, whats, and hows. Creating a Personal Brand is a must process for the career of every student.

Allow me to take you on the tour of LinkedIn. If you are a student and newbie to LinkedIn, you can reach out to me. Let’s be friends and I will help you in creating your Personal brand from scratch.

Author Bio: A Personal Branding Explorer – amalgamating observations, analysis, and insights for building brands. I help everyone and anyone in strengthening their digital footprint. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

Featured Image Source: LinkedIn Super Powers