Slides from Graduate Career Services’ LinkedIn + Online Networking for Grad Students & Postdocs workshop.

Table of Contents

Workshop Outcomes

By reviewing these slides, you’ll learn how to:

• Identify concrete ways to improve your LinkedIn profile based on your individual career needs/goals
• Develop drafts of two profile sections (Headline and About Me) that convey a strong first impression
• Identify people within your wider network(s) to connect with who relate to your specific career needs
• Practice techniques to engage in productive informational interviews

What is LinkedIn?

• Largest professional social media network with ~1.2B registered users
  • Because of its ubiquity, having an updated profile can help foster a sense of trust about you
• Landing page to manage your online professional presence online
  • LinkedIn profiles are prioritized in search engines and large language models, so having a profile makes you easier to find.
• Valuable tool for both building your network and applying to roles
  • Over 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn at some point in the typical hiring process for white collar roles.

LinkedIn: Profile Basics Checklist

• Upload a profile photo 
• Create an eye-catching LinkedIn profile headline 
• Fill out the education, experience, and skills section in detail
• Write a profile summary/About Me in 1st person and use keywords to be found in searches

LinkedIn: Profile Photo

• Profiles with a photo are 14x more likely to be viewed
• What makes a professional photo?
  • Clearly shows your face
  • Duchenne/genuine smile
  • Plain/non-distracting background (e.g. UCLA bricks, cityscape, blurred backdrop)
  • Does not necessarily need to be taken with a fancy camera: portrait mode on a cell phone can work
• Need a new profile photo? Check out the free Iris Photobooth at the UCLA Career Center!

LinkedIn: How to List Your Name(s)

• Generally, use your formal first and last name(s)
• If you have another name that you are known by in professional contexts, you can add it as an “Additional name,” which will appear in ( )s after your First Name
  • Joseph (Joe) Bruin
• Some add their degree as part of their last name
  • Bruin, PhD

LinkedIn: Creating an Eye-catching Headline

The default headline is “Most Recent Job Title” at “Organization”

Convey that you’ve done more than the minimum! Edit your headline:

• 2-5 Keywords/Phrases | Use vertical lines to separate phrases
• List specialities, research methods, and/or areas of expertise
• Template: Keyword + Job Title (or Student) + UCLA | Area of specialization

Examples:

• Bioengineer | Polymer Chemistry | Gene Delivery
• Qualitative Research Grad Student at UCLA | Consumer Insights 
• Social Scientist | Survey Design | Focus Group Facilitation

LinkedIn: Education & Experience

Education

• Include your graduate institution(s) and undergraduate institution(s)
• Make sure to spell out your degree(s)

Experience

• Use your resume bullet points
• Stick to 2-3 bullet points → viewer has to click on “See more” 
• Can connect with Skills keywords

LinkedIn: About Me/Summary

• Format: a short paragraph, written in first person
• Be specific and unique to your experiences
• Make the most important things are first: readers need to click “See more” after the first 1-2 lines
• Paired with “Top Skills” in default profile layout – make them complementary!

Suggestions for Structuring Your About Me

• Guiding Question: is this information relevant to my target audience?
• Academia/Research Project Focus
  • High level overview (goals, purpose)
  • More detail on your work (methods)
  • Outcomes (deliverables, findings)
• Industry/Non-Academic Focus
  • What are you doing that’s relevant to your post-grad school goals?
  • What’s your unique contribution?

What is networking?

At its core, networking is professional relationship building.

Three elements of successful professional relationships are:

• Length of time you’ve known one another
• Number of positive interactions
• Sense of reciprocity

Networking: Forms For Graduate Students

• Sharing research skills with a colleague
• Presenting projects beyond classes
• Finding a mentor, being a mentor
• Attending events (on campus, with community partners, etc.)
• Creating an event/space
• Sending personalized email or LinkedIn message after an event
• Conducting informational interviews

Informational Interviews: Overview

• Conversation you have with someone to learn about their professional experiences in order to explore your own career options
  • Usually between 20-60 minutes
  • Also called coffee chats, meetings
• Goal: ask for information, not for a job!

How do informational interviews fit into career planning/job searching?

• Research method: snowball interviewing
  • Learning about field(s) of interest
  • What jobs are interesting?
  • What organizations are interesting?
  • What skills are valuable?
• Networking
  • Building relationships with professionals in your field(s) of interest
  • Network can connect you to unknown contacts, opportunities, resources

Informational Interviews: Identifying People to Interview

• Start with people you know
  • Coworkers
  • Family members
  • Friends
  • Fellow students
  • Personal acquaintances
  • Professors
  • Researchers and professionals in your field(s) of interest
  • Clients or customers
• Using UCLA’s LinkedIn Alumni Tab
  • linkedin.com/school/ucla/people/
  • Keyword search through 500,000+ alumni profiles
  • Can filter by:
    • Keyword
    • Graduation Year
    • Location
    • Company
    • Field
    • Major/Program
    • Skills
    • Degree of connection

Informational Interviews: Set Up

• Contact via email, LinkedIn, or in-person
• Share that you’re interested in their career and/or industry
• Make it clear you’re only seeking advice (not a job)
• Include a structured ask (“Would you be willing to meet on Zoom for 30 minutes to discuss…?”)

Example Language

• “I’m exploring opportunities in X area, and Joe Bruin mentioned you’d be a great person to chat with. Are you available to meet?”
• “Your job at Y Corp sounds fascinating. I’d love to learn more about it. Could we schedule a meeting?”
• “Do you have any jobs available for me?”
• “Could you help me out with the job search?”

Informational Interviews: Cold Call/Message Key Components

• Short Greeting
  • Establish common ground if you haven’t met (“cold call”)
  • Remind how you are connected if you’ve met (“warm call”)
• Ask them for something specific, concrete (e.g. informational interview)

Informational Interviews: Cold Call/Message Examples

Informational Interviews: Example Steps & Structure

Example Informational Interview Steps

• Introduce yourself briefly
• Spend the bulk of the time asking questions about the other person
  • Background, current position, future career trajectory, advice
• Toward the end of the conversation, ask for their explicit advice, especially:
  • People in their network they can connect you with
  • Organizations to know
  • Useful resources
• End by thanking the person for their time and advice. Be specific!

Example Informational Interview Structure

Focus	Length of time	Topics
Present	~10 minutes	Current role/responsibilities, organization they’re at
Past	~5 minutes	Academic/professional background, how they found the job, interview process
Future	~5 minutes	Professional vision/plan for the next 2-5 years
Advice	~5 minutes	Relevant people they can connect you to, organizations to learn about, useful resources

Informational Interviews: Standard Operating Procedures

Creating a Standard Operating Procedure for conducting informational interviews can help to make informational interviews easier, more organized, and more effective

Example Informational Interview Standard Operating Procedure

1. Identify the information about the person that is most important to you
2. Develop Present, Past, Future question lists based on that information
3. Conduct informational interview
4. Perform post-interview tasks:
   • Add contact on LinkedIn
   • Send thank you notes
   • Schedule follow up

Informational Interviews: Following Up

• Day Of: send a brief thank you note the same day
• After ~1 Week: send another thank you note, detailing how you have benefited from their advice
• Long Term: reach out when you are searching or applying

Informational Interviews: Thank You Notes

The Two Notes Strategy

• Send a thank you note the day of and a more detailed thank you note 3-5 days after an informational interview.
• If you scheduled via email, the first thank you note can be in the same email thread, but the second thank you note should be in a new thread.

Why two notes?

• Lengthens the relationship
• Increases interactions
• Demonstrates reciprocity: if they take time to help, you’ll follow through.

Thank You Note Template

Subject Line: Thank You

Hello [Name],

Thank you for chatting with me the other day. It was great to learn about your career and [info they shared that was interesting or helpful to you].

I [follow up on their advice] and found it so helpful, (Optional:  particularly [detail]. After [describe follow up], I found [link] that I thought you might enjoy.)

Thank you again–I really appreciate your insights.

Sincerely,

Jesse Bruin

Thank You Note Template

Subject Line: Thank you!

Hello Jamie,

Thank you for chatting with me the other day. It was great to learn about your career and the publishing world.

I checked out the Social Science Research Association website and found it so helpful, particularly their resources for early career professionals. 

Thank you again–I really appreciate your insights!

Sincerely,

Jesse Bruin

Networking: Scheduling & Tracking

• Find a weekly time to reach out to people
  • This can range from 3 – 30 steps, depending on how your brain parses tasks
• Make a copy of GCS’ Networking Tracker
  • Add people from the “Identifying New Contacts” activity (using LinkedIn or UCLA One) onto the Tracking Spreadsheet
• Action item: put a time on your calendar this week to reach out to the person you identified in the “Who Do You Know?” activity to set up an informational interview