Get LinkedIn. This is a great professional networking tool with more than 20 million professionals all around the world. It is free to join and is a terrific tool to help you develop and manage your professional online presence. There are so many benefits for using this tool in your career, some of which are: getting noticed in job market, uncovering inside connections, exploring companies and opportunities that you may not have even thought of, getting introduced to other professionals – the list goes on and on.

Remember, in the world of networking and recruiting, one of the most common things that a person will do is google your name. If you’ve never googled your own name before, go ahead and give it a try. This is a big part your online presence – albeit not all of it, but a good majority of it. One thing that is critical is that now that you’re in the career marketplace your online presence must be squeaky clean. Wild party links to MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites can be a big career mistake.

LinkedIn can help to provide you with a professional link that will show up on a google search. Just create your account with LinkedIn, complete as much of your profile as possible and then begin to send ‘invites’ to other people you know who are trusted colleagues/contacts. Soon, they’ll be joining too and you’ll be amazed at how many people you are actually connected to in the world. So, do it now – and remember to work on the profile part of your page, since this is where you can list your education, previous employers or volunteer groups, affiliations, etc. That way when others find you on LinkedIn they will be able to get to know who you are.

Action:

It’s easy, here’s the link – so, get on there and set up your account - start growing your professional online presence.

Posted by Robin – FiredUP Careers

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