Introduction

As time ticks and summer approaches the undergrads to get prepared to face the job market. Though this period is quite different for international students on F1 visas. As we know we humans are social animals we often don’t consider socializing important in general.

We use social media platforms such as Instagram for picture sharing, Facebook as branding, Twitter as an Information sharing, just like these, for professional networking LinkedIn is used.

LinkedIn is one of the resources that is advantageous for fresher and experienced professionals in the job hunt. LinkedIn is a Networking Platform where you can connect with your Professors, Classmates, relatives, or your field-related industry professionals. It is a helpful tool for OPT Job search, recruitment, to stay updated with industry news.

Growing your professional status in order to enhance your career is beneficial to you. For those who are looking for OPT Jobs in USA, LinkedIn has many OPT Candidate Job opportunities for international students.

Quick overview of the crucial steps to be followed while finding a OPT Job in USA through LinkedIn.

The two major areas that require your efforts, professional creativity, and candidature showcasing ability are when;

[A] You build your LinkedIn account

[B] You follow certain steps to get a OPT Jobs/CPT Jobs through LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn account can be created with an email id or a phone number and follow the following steps to start with your professional job hunting journey.

[A] LinkedIn Account Building

1. Profile Picture:

It is necessary to have a profile photo on your LinkedIn account. Users who have a profile photo are more likely to get views and responses than those who do not.

Your profile photo must be clearly visible, decent, and look professional.

A high resolution and close-up profile photo will be advisable.

Your profile image should be updated (within the past few months) and display how you look on a regular basis.

2. Correct and perfect headline:

The first sentence that LinkedIn users see on your profile is your headline.

Your headline should convey who you are, your field, and what you are known for in a short and precise manner.

At least add 3 titles that represent your work and field.

The titles/headline should be focused on the keywords that are mostly used by your prospects while searching for the candidates of your field.

Say for e.g., if you are a salesperson, your keywords can be Sales Representative | Sales Associate | Sales Manager | Sales Director | Senior/Junior Sales Executive.

3. Location:

Make sure you add your actual location so that you easily get spotted by your prospects searching for the candidates from your location.

Many times, employers prefer local candidates over relocating applicants for many reasons.

4. Add a badge:

In your profile, below your profile picture, you will see a tab called "Open to" click on the same, choose to find a new job, fill up the details and add it to your profile.

As a job seeker, enabling "open to" will indicate that you are open to work and in search of job opportunities.

By adding this detail will give you a badge of "Open to work" on your profile photo. This badge will help employers or prospects to recognize you easily.

You can hide the "Open to work" information from your colleagues or current employer by enabling "share with the recruiter only" while filling up the details in the "Open to" area if you want to.

5. Add a perfect and unique summary:

Recruiters are more likely to judge you on the basis of your headline and summary. So, make sure you create an attractive and perfect summary.

Add genuine details, avoid copy-pasting from Google, and create your own content about yourself.

Add relevant keywords and highlight them. For e.g., if you are into Big Data and Data Science, your keywords can be - Analytics, Descriptive Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Batch Processing, Cloud Computing, Data Mining, Dark Data, Data Scientist, Data Lake, Hadoop, IoT, Machine Learning, etc.

In the summary section, you can include how many years of experience you have, list out your Technical Abilities, related achievements if you have any, current job title, roles, and responsibilities you are seeking for.

Your summary can be 3 to 5 paragraphs long. Make use of numbers and bullet points where needed.

6. Enhance the experience part:

Your mentioned experience details are going to decide that whether you are eligible for a particular job or not. So, it is necessary that you add genuine and exact experience and detailed work experience.

Mention your roles, responsibilities, and achievements throughout your work experience.

You can skip the work experiences that are irrelevant to your field.

If you are an HR professional with 7 years of experience, you don't need to mention that for a small period of months you worked as a telecaller in a particular company.

Add only relevant and related experience to gain a positive impact.

Again, do not forget to add "Keyword". Keywords let the LinkedIn algorithm know that your profile is suitable for the definite keywords used by the employers/recruiters.

You can research the keywords that are relevant to your field.

Review your peer's, colleagues' profiles that belong to your field or same job title to know more about what keywords to use in your work experience.

7. Skills and endorsement section:

In addition to your degree, your skills play a major role in landing you a job. Employers nowadays are looking for candidates that are well-versed with the trending hard skills and the skills that can help their company to achieve its goal.

Hence, it is necessary to feature your most in-demand skills here.

Add every skill you hold with specific keywords (E.g. Analytics and Modelling, Machine Learning methods, Programming, Data Visualization for a Data Scientist).

You can add up a maximum of 50 skills to your LinkedIn profile.

After adding skills to your profile, the endorsement feature will play its role.

Once you've added a skill to your profile, 1st-degree relationships can authenticate it and strengthen its weighting.

When a connection supports your skills, it adds to the strength of your profile and boosts your chances of being identified for opportunities involving those skills.

8. Benefit from the "Featured" section:

Here, you can show any projects on which you have worked in school/college, articles, or blogs written by you or any important events arranged by you.

This feature is really helpful to those who are freshers and seeking a job. You can show your study projects to let your prospect know about you and the work you have done in the course of study.

E.g. if you are looking for a content writing job, you can add links to any articles or blogs or any content written by you as a learner.

Using the relevant content will help you stand out from the competition and make a lasting impression on the decision-maker.

9. Fill up the "Interest" section:

An interest section will not help you in landing a job but it will definitely showcase your personality to the decision-makers or potential profile viewers.

The "news sources, Influencers, companies, colleges, and groups" you follow on LinkedIn are categorized as "interests."

This is beneficial because it informs your prospects or other users about your interests and might even assist you in making new connections with people who share your interests.

[B] Steps to be followed to secure the desired OPT jobs.

LinkedIn is the most popular professional social networking site, with 133 million users in the United States alone and a global reach of 200 nations and territories. It is a popular platform to use for job opportunities.

However, it is necessary to follow certain steps in order to get a job through LinkedIn. Let us see, how to utilize LinkedIn potentially to get employment through it.

1. Keep your profile updated:

The first step that is helpful in hunting for a job is keeping your LinkedIn profile up-to-date.

When you're actively engaging with connections and firms to obtain a job, you want your current experience to be visible to anyone who visits your page.

Hence, add your recent experiences, studies, projects, or professional activities to catch the employer's eye.

2. Be active on LinkedIn:

It is advisable to stay active on your LinkedIn profile to get quick responses.

Just like any other social media platform, the more you spend your time here, the more likely you are to get responses. Stay active and updated about the activities on LinkedIn.

Post your articles or professional works for the engagements.

Connect with the professional groups and make interactions with them on LinkedIn.

The more you interact and post professionally, the more you'll be seen and gain recognition.

3. Follow the potential companies:

• After adding the latest and up-to-date information to your LinkedIn profile, make sure you make fruitful and potential connections. Your connections can vastly boost your exposure and provide you with access to new opportunities.

• Wondering to what kind of people should you connect? And how to approach a connection that can be helpful in getting a job? Well! Let me give some guidance.

• Finding the right set of people to connect with starts by following the potential companies. Companies that hire individuals that belong to your field of study.

Make quick research on the companies that belong that have the opening for your desired job title and where you can gain employment, list them out.

Search for the listed industries on your LinkedIn and start following them.

For e.g. [1] if you belong to the Web Development field, you can follow the companies like Google, Apple, Accenture, Mathworks, TCS. [2] If you belong to the accounting field, you can follow the companies like PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, BDO.

4. Make Connections:

After you've followed the prospects, the next step is to recognize employees from your field who work for the same firm.

How would you search for them?
View the company's profile, you will see the numbers of total employees working in that company, the same link will take you to the list of all the employees working in that particular company.

Identify the prospects, employees that belong to your field or desired job title and connect with them.

You can also approach connections to the HR or Talent Acquisition team of the company. Such connections might help you in landing a job.

Connections may give you the strength of networking with prospects. For e.g., if you are interested in working in any particular company and you see that someone from your connections is having a contact there, You can ask your connection to introduce you to the person with whom he/she is connected in that firm.

5. Create a template while sending connection requests:

While sending a connection request, create a template/greetings or a short introduction of yourself for initiating to add them into your network.

In this short note, you can mention, how you know the person and why you are approaching for a connection, be precise about your intention to connect.

You can also add one or two lines stating you are looking for a job and how can you be the best fit in a particular field or company, you may ask for a reference too.

Adding a note to your connection requests not only helps in the development of excellent relationships but also increases the likelihood that your desired connection will accept your request.

6. Post your achievements, success:

LinkedIn is all about presenting your professional accomplishments or successes in order to capture the attention of potential employers and convince them that you are the ideal fit for their firm.

Write a status about it and share it with the world if you achieve something, whether it's an award, a successful project, or great grades in a certain assignment.

Remember to share and like other people's posts as well!

Participate in LinkedIn groups and engage with others. The more you interact and post as a professional, the more you'll be noticed and recognized.

7. Connect with the LinkedIn groups:

Join and contribute to industry-related groups.

Get insider information and discover how your industry operates from the ground up, establish a reputation for having a point of view or a specialty, or locate people who can tell you more about their career path to see if it is something that interests you.

You can message other group members to introduce yourself or your services once you've joined a few necessary groups.

8. Utilize this application for your interview preparation:

You can also use LinkedIn to prepare for your interview.

Look up the person who will be interviewing you on LinkedIn to see their professional history, specific interests, and any current projects they are working on. Use that information to your advantage by tailoring your responses to engage them during your interview.

You'll learn a lot about the company by reading their blog, and you'll be able to keep up with industry news that you may bring up during the interview.

I believe the above-mentioned account-building ideas, as well as the steps to follow in order to find OPT jobs through LinkedIn; will be of use to you. In addition to that, if you still face any difficulty in handling your LinkedIn account or don't have a clue about how to use LinkedIn for a job search, you can avail United OPT's services for the same. United OPT also provides the service of building any job seeker's account on LinkedIn along with maintaining and handling it well. The expert team of United OPT maintains your account professionally, applies their knowledge to find the best job for you, and stays active on it till you land a job in the USA.