Written by Caitlin Rentell
One of the most helpful pieces of advice I received as a student was to get myself on LinkedIn. At first glance, LinkedIn can be quite overwhelming and confusing to understand. However, once you get the hang of it and learn how to use it to your advantage, LinkedIn can be a great asset in helping you in your career.
To start, make sure you have an account and that your profile page is up to date with your career experience, education, certificates etc. Don’t worry about making this perfect to begin with but make sure it is up to date.
Top tip: Look at other professionals in your field and how they present their profile – use this as inspiration for how to best represent your current career path on your profile.
Now your profile is set up and updated, let’s dive into the seven top uses for LinkedIn:
Light profile stalking
Let’s start with the most obvious one! LinkedIn is a great way to not only find other marine conservationists, but also a chance to have a snoop at how their career path has taken shape. You can see their education, where they have worked / volunteered and what they post on their profile. You can also click on the organisations they have worked with and follow them for future opportunity notifications. It feels a bit sneaky but it’s a great way to see how people have gained experience!
It might be that you already know what organisations you hope to work with in the future. From the organisation’s page, you can see their employees and go through their pages to see the roles within the company. The deeper you dig, the more you can find out about what experience you could potentially obtain in order to land a job there.
Networking
LinkedIn also allows you to connect and message other users. You can also start conversations by liking or commenting on their posts. A good way to make connections through the message function is to imagine you are having a more professional conversation, unlike those that you might have on other social media platforms.
Top tip: For marine conservationists at the top of their fields, imagine that their inbox is full of people messaging them asking ‘how can I get a job?’ or ‘do you know any openings?’. Before sending them a message, make sure that you try to stand out a bit:
- Introduce yourself and why you wanted to reach out to them in particular
- When asking questions, be specific and relevant to their field or experience
- Show your passion so they are more engaged to reply
You might want to message someone who is recruiting to ask them about the role. Or maybe you see a researcher posting about their research, and you would be interested to get involved. Whatever the reason, make sure that you are clear with why you want to reach out before sending off broad questions to get a helpful response. And as with any use of social media, make sure to be respectful and follow the professional community policies set by LinkedIn.
Job boards
LinkedIn is somewhere that companies will advertise opportunities. However, if you are not following those companies, you might not see their posts. To have a good chance at finding opportunities, make sure to follow job boards. They will do the hard work of finding current openings in your field and post them either directly to LinkedIn or to their websites. Either way, it can help to save you a lot of time searching and scrolling! WiseOceans have their own LinkedIn page here where we post advice and opportunities regularly: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wiseoceans/posts/?feedView=all
Showcase you!
Another great aspect of LinkedIn is being able to create posts that can be liked, commented and reposted by your network in order to grow your connections. If you struggle to come up with ideas for posts here are some great places to start:
- A key take away from a recent seminar or webinar
- An interesting find – strangest item from a litter pick or an interesting rock pool find
- A recent achievement or award
- A fun fact or an interesting paper you read recently
- Rundown of an event you visited
- A piece of art you created that is linked to your professional interest
The more you follow other people the more ideas you will get. Some recruiters might also check your LinkedIn whether you share it or not so make sure it’s suitable but shows your passion to potential recruiters!
Top tip: I see a lot of people who make posts asking their network for advice or help with securing a job – make sure that you have built up your connections and be specific with exactly what it is you are interested to pursue. The broader your post, the less likely people will feel they can help.
Finding courses and trainings
The main way which I come across webinars, seminars and courses is through LinkedIn. To make sure you find these types of posts, follow organisations whose work interests you so that should they host an event you will see the sign-up post.
Top tip: Follow universities and their marine departments, they may have public events or talks that anyone can attend.
Keeping up to date with publications
By following researchers in your field, they may post their recent findings and papers on their profile. This can help you to stay up to date with new publications and should you have any questions about their research you can reach out to them direct. You can also reshare and support their work, so their research is shared to your own network.
Expand your horizons!
Despite being a marine conservationist, LinkedIn can also open up doors into other industries that you might not have considered before. By following not just marine conservationists but people and organisations working in other fields, this might spark different conversations or allow for further training in other fields. For example, sustainability ties in quite nicely to marine conservation, so make sure to follow individuals working in sustainability as well as companies supporting this work. Or maybe you have an interest in technology – follow some tech companies, and maybe you can draw some links between their work and marine conservation!
We hope this guide helps you with you build up your LinkedIn account. For more tips on building a career in the marine sector, check out the other posts in our WiseOceans Autumn Blog Series.
