LinkedIN – Driving skilled employment for people with disabilities

Sudhanya is an Intern from Christ University Bangalore, interning at EnAble India in April/May 2014. From a media studies, communication background. She is working with EnAble India providing social media assistance in-order to reach a wider audience.

LinkedIn like Facebook is another social network forum where you can meet people and connect with them. Facebook is usually considered as a casual forum where you connect with your friends and families share your pictures, videos, share the events happening in your life. LinkedIn is more of a professional forum where you connect with employers of companies, HR personals, recruitment personals and workforce personals. LinkedIn is used to professionals and companies for job searching, hiring people, connecting with employers, conduct research about the company and connect with various business related groups. This is a platform where you get to upload your resume/CV, write about your work experience, your skills, your expertise, get recommendation from your employers or people who are aware about you and your talent.

The top 10 uses of creating a LinkedIn profile

1. LinkedIn profile is usually called as an online resume, which can be modified and updated as and when required. This online resume can be viewed by potential employers, HR recruiters. It’s important to have a strong LinkedIn, because there is possibility for the profile to show up as and when an employer or HR recruiter are searching for candidates with a particular skills, experience, qualifications.
2. LinkedIn profile helps in sharing your professional information like work experience, skills, expertise, qualifications with others, It helps to keep in touch with the people in your company, your colleagues from your previous companies, people from other companies, your friends from your universities/institutions who are now successfully placed in companies.
3. LinkedIn as a facility where your employers, institutions, friends can write a recommendation about you. This recommendation would be similar to a recommendation letter we get from institutions/universities, letters from previous companies which have information about your good performance, your skills, and your talent which would recommend you for a particular job. This recommendation would be an added advantage for you. It would also make your LinkedIn profile look good in the eyes of the employer or recruiter.
4. Often there is a delusion that LinkedIn is necessary only when we are looking for a job. But it is necessary to understand that the importance of a LinkedIn profile starts from the time we start studying so that we could connect with our professors & classmates, through professors we might get the contacts of a fellow senior who is successfully placed in a good company and being in contact with classmates help to connect with them in a professional forums, they can be helpful by writing a recommendation about your skills and talents, if they are successfully placed in a company, they can be a useful contact to find a job.
5. The usefulness of a LinkedIn profile does not stop when we find a job. Even if we are successfully placed in a good company and we are doing really well in this company, a LinkedIn profile still comes handy. LinkedIn helps in connecting with anyone from different branches of your company, it also gives you the privilege to connect with anyone be it a manager, or a CEO, vice president or even the president the company. This is an opportunity to build your professional connections. All you have to do is to send a friend request through your LinkedIn profile and wait for them to accept your request.
6. A LinkedIn profile can be used to frequently update your skills, the project you are currently working on, the client you are working for, mention about a project you have successfully completed, you can write about the kind of job you are doing, your roles & responsibilities, you can write about all the companies you have worked in, the role of your jobs there, you can request you colleagues of these companies to recommend you which would be an added advantage. Most importantly you can inform the world that you have got a promotion or found a new job by updating the LinkedIn profile with the new job post and your new responsibility.
7. The best advantage of having a LinkedIn profile is that when every time someone Google’s your name in the Google search bar, it’s always your LinkedIn profile which will pop up first rather than Facebook or any other social networking forums, this will help you understand how important a LinkedIn profile is. You can find most of the top officials having a LinkedIn profile. In fact few multinational companies have made it mandatory for all its employees to have a LinkedIn profile.
8. LinkedIn has a facility of groups & pages. Through a LinkedIn you have the privilege to join groups which you like, professional groups, groups relating to your knowledge of expertise and skills where you can take part in professional discussions & also get a chance to meet like-minded people. You can also follow official company pages.
9. In LinkedIn unlike Facebook you have the privilege to see who all have viewed you profiles, how many times someone has viewed your profiles, people from field has viewed you profile. This would be an added advantage for you as it helps you know, who are interested in your profile.
10. LinkedIn has the opportunity to even search for a job, search through the field of interest, location preferred, companies preferred. This would either help you to apply for a job using your profile or it will navigate you to a job seeking websites like Naukri, monster.com, times jobs, etc.

These points are the clear indication of how a LinkedIn profile can be beneficial to you. So get started with starting a LinkedIn profile.

EnAble India can assist People With Disabilities create great LinkedIN profiles. Call EnAble India on 080 4282 3636 to arrange