Assignment 2.2: Email Memorandum on LinkedIn Best Practices

MEMORANDUM:

TO: Members of Team Victory Lap

FROM: Brent Hanover

DATE: February 9, 2019

SUBJECT: LinkedIn Best Practices

Hello team,

I have researched best practices from LinkedIn and have decided to share them with you as a part of Assignment 2.2. Please consider the following tips and incorporate them into your LinkedIn usage.

1. Acquire headshots from a professional photographer at least every year or two.
2. Include keywords in your profile that are relevant to your desired industry.
3. For work experience, be sure to list quantifiable accomplishments. Instead of “helped the company save money”, write “reduced expenditures by $25k”.
4. Keep your profile up to date, and consistently comment on and share articles that match your career interests
5. Use connections to your advantage. If you are applying to a company, see if you have any primary or secondary connections who work there, and ask them for a reference.
6. Always be sure to be positive, courteous, and professional when interacting with other LinkedIn users.
7. Avoid ‘cold calling’ on LinkedIn, where you message someone with no connections asking for favours.
8. Get endorsed for your skills by your peers. If you want your peers to endorse you, endorse them first.
9. Stay up to date with prospective employers by frequenting their pages and reading their posts.
10. Include volunteer experiences on your profile by updating the “Volunteer Experiences & Causes” section on your profile.

LinkedIn is an extremely useful resource for job seekers and job posters. It is important to keep your profile up to date, and to stay up to date on the pages of prospective employers. I hope that you find these 10 tips as useful as I did. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kapko, Matt. 7 Common Mistakes Job Seekers Make on LinkedIn. CIO from IDG, 26 February 2015, https://www.cio.com/article/2889296/social-media/7-common-mistakes-job-seekers-make-on-linkedin.html. Accessed February 9, 2018

Zantal, Amanda. 29 LinkedIn Tips for Professional Networking, Business & Marketing. Hubspot. 5 September 2017,

https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23454/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-mastering-linkedin.aspx. Accessed February 8, 2019.

Pullen, John Patrick. The Ultimate Job Seeker’s Guide to LinkedIn. Time, 13 July 2016, http://www.time.com/4403304/the-ultimate-job-seekers-guide-to-linkedin. Accessed February 08, 2019.

Doyle, Alison. The Balance Careers. Balance Careers, 9 December 2018, www.thebalancecareers.com/tips-to-make-a-better-linkedin-profile-2062332. Accessed February 8, 2019.