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Prepare for the Career Fair by reviewing the materials below.

• Dress professionally and place your laptop at eye level to ensure the camera shows you at your best.
• Position yourself so the main light source is in front of you, shining on your face. Make sure there are no windows behind you in order to avoid blown out backgrounds.
• Wipe down your laptop's camera of any dirt/dust. Build-up can occur resulting in foggy images.
• To ensure the best sound quality, make sure your surroundings are quiet and use headphones when logging on to the platform.

Four expert advisors answer questions about when you need a CV, how to write one, and what you can do to make it your own.

A panel discussion about what you can do to build your best resume yet!

By Lauren Celano, CEO Propel Careers

LinkedIn is such a useful tool for branding yourself, showcasing your background, building connections and job searching. We are so fortunate to have this tool – it’s hard to think how people functioned without it… Many people have asked for my advice on how to best use LinkedIn. Therefore, I decided to write this article to provide tips on how to leverage the value of LinkedIn so that you maximize the value of this tool. In today’s competitive marketplace, the ability to differentiate yourself is critical to stand out from the crowd. 

People are extremely visual and usually remember faces more than names. If you meet a person at a networking event and send a Linkedin email afterwards, if you don’t have a profile picture, the person may not realize that they have already met. Sometimes people may attend a few networking events throughout a day or week, so pictures are so much more helpful than just names.

For your picture, this does not have to be taken at a professional studio. Most digital cameras work well enough for this purpose. Stand against a blank wall, have a professional outfit on, smile, and have a friend take a photo. Try not to have a lot of objects or distractions in the photo. This can sometimes make you look unprofessional.

Build out your profile so that people can see your skills and experiences. Especially if you are looking for a job, your profile should include information about what you have done, lab techniques you know, presentations you have given at large conferences publications you have, etc. Linkedin is a powerful tool, but so many people do not use it to their advantage. For example, just listing, Research associate, X Biotech company or Ph.d student, X school, without any details does not provide the reader any information on what you have done. If you are a student or post doc, list information about when you think you will be done. Without this, companies may be reluctant to contact you about jobs since they won’t know when you will be done. Recruiting is extremely time consuming for companies, so the easier you can make it for companies the better.

Potential employers and also people who you ask for informational interview, will almost always check a LinkedIn profile, the more professional you can make it, the more attractive you become as a candidate. It shows that you are serious about your career and your personal brand.

Many companies and recruiters use linekdin to search for individuals who have specific skills. If you have these in your profile, then you increase the chance of being “found” by an HR person when they search. If you do not have details listed, then your chance of being identified, is almost 0.

 Potential employers will almost always look at an individuals LinkedIn account as they are reviewing resumes. If they cannot find you on Linkedin, it can create a red flag. If the name on your resume is different than the name on your Linkedin account, you should modify one of them to make them the same.  

Oftentimes, people seem to use LinkedIn so casually. When you apply for a job, it is not recommended to link in to the hiring manager. They usually don’t know you, so why would they connect with you? People, especially as they become more senior in their career, are very careful and selective about their Linkedin connections. People like to have people in their network who they know and have something in common with – perhaps they worked together, went to school together, did a project together, etc. If you ask someone to link in to you who does not know you, it may make them uncomfortable and may even hurt your application chances.    

To build upon the previous tip, as you grow your LinkedIn network, you should only connect with people who you know. This way, your network becomes personal and actually useful for you as you grow in your career. Adding a lot of people just to increase your numbers actually dilutes the value of your own personal LinkedIn network. 

If you are looking to learn more about a certain area, join a group in that area on LinkedIn. There are thousands of groups in LinkedIn. When you are new to the job search process, this is extremely valuable to get a lay of the land in your particular field. To find groups, you can search for them by keyword. You may be surprised by how many groups may be relevant to you…   

People are busy and have a lot of things in their mind. The easier you can make it for people to remember how they met you or what you are looking for from them, the better. If you met someone at a international networking event and are following up with a LinkedIn request, say in the subject line, “international networking event follow up” and in the body of the linkedin request, say, Dear X, It was a pleasure meeting you at the international networking event on DATE. To follow up, I would like to link into you so that we can keep in touch” or something like this. It is amazing how many times people don’t do this. I wonder how many LinkedIn requests do not get answered because people cannot remember the context in which they met someone.

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