<p>I’m currently a senior in high school, and some of our teachers are telling us to start building LinkedIn profiles. I don’t know much about LinkedIn, but aren’t we too young? I can’t imagine who I’d be ‘linked’ to since none of us have actual jobs, and I don’t know if volunteering experience is relevant. If it would be helpful somehow, I’d do it, but I thought LinkedIn was for more professional adults - I don’t want to seem like a kid just messing around. So at what age should students start building a LinkedIn?</p>
<p>I think it would be relevant to have an account once you’ve had a job, internship, or something you would put down on a resume. It might not apply to what career you want in the future.</p>
<p>For example, if you’re a cashier at a grocery store, I think that’s worth mentioning in an interview or putting on a resume, for the next position you want. There’s probably other co-workers at the grocery store, and you could add them to your circle. </p>
<p>I have had a few internships and summer jobs, so I see how that might work. I think it might be a little weird since I’m not really in the job market or anything, but it’ll be good to keep in mind for later.</p>
<p>You can do a LinkedIn now using your volunteer experience. It’s surprising, but a lot of my own professional contacts are people I have met while working on community and volunteer experience (both with my firm and separate from it). Those people might not seem important now but having those names at hand can come in handy later. </p>
<p>But it’s not a priority right now in my opinion to get that started. Setting one up now wouldn’t hurt or help that much.</p>
What do you expect to get with a LI profile? Sometimes good to wait until you have some relevant experience to post and can make the right impression. (Volunteering can be fine, depending on what it actually is/was. But what else?) You have time. When you apply for the first internship or important summer job, you’ll likely be filling out an application, anyway, with the details for that. In the meantime, I’m not sure it’s important at all to start a profile just for the sake of having one.
Not really helpful until you are in college. So, sometime between freshman and senior year when you have work experience, internships, research, or volunteer work to post. No one will look at LinkedIn, other than as a screening exercise, prior to then.
I found LinkedIn to be just another privacy-threatening data vacuum with little clear professional advantage. I dropped mine when they started e-mailing friends (who knows how they got their addresses) saying that I had invited them to join LinkedIn when in fact I had not done so.
Privacy-threatening, indeed. I understand that if you join, then look up someone, you can be pegged. Now, all this worked for D1, when job hunting, after graduation and a grant year. She found some opps via LI, updated the profile she posted as a college senior. Now competitors find her by searching on the employer and contact her (but she has accumulated some experience.) It “may” work for finding an internship for the summer after freshman year. But the magic is still limited. You still have to have what they want and go through an application process.
DS just completed an app yesterday that asked for a linkedin page if you had one. We scrambled and set one up, entered the link to the app, then backtracked and populated the profile with resume items and project links that would not have been possible in the regular application (not a common app school).
Interesting. At first I thought you meant a job app. But now that he’s on, he can update and later use the search for internships function.
My college sophomore just created hers yesterday. She has some summer research experience to put on it. She linked with profs, older students who have graduated, and some of her friends.
I work as an independent consultant, and think LinkedIn is a godsend. It allows me to easily keep in touch with people as they move between jobs. Even if I had permanent employment, it would be super valuable if I wanted to find a new job.
My understanding is that a LinkenIn account is better than a FB page for employers to find when they do a simple google search, which is pretty much the first thing that a potential employer, HR person would do. I also like how you can put in a resume and it can be shared easily. When my daughter was looking for a job, I had a couple of people ask me about her bona fides and I knew that when I shared her LinkedIn account, it was information that was already out there. All three of my twenty something kids have LinkedIn accounts and got them in college.
I glanced at this thread quickly and thought it asked when students should get a Lincoln.
Oops! 