7 ways teachers should be using LinkedIn to help their careers

7 ways teachers should be using LinkedIn to help their careers When you’re in search of a job, you know that qualifications matter. However, you’ve probably also heard the age old cliche, it’s all about who you know. Assuming having relevant connections and maintaining professional relationships legitimately do help people improve their careers, it’s crucial for job seekers (including teachers!) to not only accept this, but to embrace it.  Fortunately, finding the right medium to showcase your professional connections as well as your skills and qualifications has never been easier. LinkedIn is the world’s largest online social platform geared towards career advancement. The user friendly website (and mobile app) allow professionals of all industries to communicate and share information with their professional connections. It provides services for recruiters and hiring managers, salespeople, and for job seekers.  Knowing LinkedIn is especially recommended for people with diverse and/or large networks, being a LinkedIn user myself, and r ecently working on Teach Away’s career development week, I got to thinking that it offers a handful of tools that international education professionals may find very helpful. If you’re a teacher or education professional - whether abroad, aiming to go abroad, or looking to continually improve your career at home - here are some ways you can make LinkedIn work for you.  1.  Connect with old and current colleagues.  If you have friends and colleagues from previous employment or study experiences, LinkedIn is the place to reconnect. Having well-respected education professionals as direct connections on LinkedIn can go a long way. Maybe your next interviewer will have one in common... and just like that, you’ll have your foot in the door.  2. Share your resume.  At its core, LinkedIn is an online resume. Post your personal summary, employment history, volunteer experience, activities and interests, skills, and more. This may be the first version of your resume an employer sees. Li nkedIn has streamlined the process of getting your resume onto the desk of people who matter.  3. Show that you are active and up-to-date with contemporary professional social media.  Sometimes recruiters, hiring managers, and principals will search for teaching candidates on LinkedIn just to see if they’ve invested the time and effort in creating a profile and presence. Being active on the website shows that you have a commitment to your career and to your career-based relationships.  4. List your skills and gain endorsements from your connections.  Overseas and at home, teachers with specialized skills are a hot commodity. You can use LinkedIn to list your skills. Then your connections can see your listed skills and endorse you for skills they know you have. Teaching English as a Foreign Language listed as a skill and backed up with 25 endorsements looks a lot better than not having a LinkedIn profile.  5. Gain recommendations.  Gone are the days of requesting letters of recomme ndation from trusted colleagues. LinkedIn provides the space for others to recommend you based on your past employment and projects shown on your profile. Of course, if someone writes something you don’t agree with, it won’t be shown on your LinkedIn profile.  6. Promote and share your extracurricular activities.  Do you have a blog about your classroom or a sports team that you coach outside of work hours? Relevant research or a side venture? LinkedIn is the place to share extracurriculars that highlight your skillset. This is especially important for teachers looking to obtain employment abroad - extracurricular experience tends to be highly valued by placement coordinators and administration at schools around the world.  7. Follow influencers and companies. LinkedIn has introduced features that allow users to follow influencers and companies that interest them. If you have a teacher or education writer you look up to, or an education council that interests you, there’s a go od chance you’ll find them on LinkedIn. Here is a great place to engage in meaningful discussions, share what you read, or simply to gain insight on what thought leaders are talking about.  Have fun getting set up on LinkedIn (and don’t forget to update your resume with your LinkedIn profile once you’ve made some connections and gained some endorsements)!  We have a bunch more career development tips and tricks to share next week so don’t forget to sign up for Passport to Teach, Teach Away’s career development week.