Using LinkedIn Jobs to Land Your Next Internship

This article was featured on the "Recruiting" category of LinkedIn.

Every university has its own career portal–UC Berkeley's is called Callisto. For the most part, utilizing your university's career portal will give you a huge advantage over any other third party websites. Mainly because you know that the recruiting firm or company is targeting your school for their hiring efforts.

However, relying exclusively on your university's career portal is not wise. There are thousands of internship opportunities and the majority of them will not appear on your career portal due to several reasons such as demographics demand and limited recruiting budget. Many underclassmen have asked where I go to look for internships online. My answer: Callisto and LinkedIn Jobs exclusively.

Since each university has a different career portal, I will not dive too deep into Callisto. Rather, the focus will be on LinkedIn Jobs. Why LinkedIn Jobs? I came upon LI Jobs while internship hunting last spring. I do not regularly recommend a particular career website unless I have used it regularly, and have trialed several alternatives and not found anything better. Out of the six internship offers I got last year, two came directly through LI Jobs, one of which I accepted. Here are LI Jobs' four unique selling propositions (USPs) that I thought were helpful while recruiting last year.

#1. Integration with LinkedIn Profile

For the most part, using LI Jobs made the most sense since I was already an active LinkedIn user. The integration with your LinkedIn Profile makes LI Jobs even more attractive for new college job seekers. Being able to see how a particular internship relates back to one of your connections is very powerful. Once that has been identified, reach out for advice!

Building a network is important, but putting it into use is even more important. Put your network to 'work' and reach out. You may never know if your connections will soon turn into potential referrals. Even if that is not the case, you may still gain valuable insights on your dream companies' intern recruiting process. Most importantly, you will also turn a weak tie to a strong connection for future opportunities.

"People You Know at X Company"

#2. Regularly Updated

After trying several different career websites for a span of four months last year, I quickly realized that the majority of Fortune 500 and start-up internships listed on other career websites were always listed on LI Jobs, but rarely vice versa. LI Jobs also had several unique internship postings that I rarely found elsewhere (i.e. university career portal or other websites) except for the company own jobs portal.

And nothing beats the fact that roughly 20-50 new marketing internships were updated daily on LI Jobs. As someone who recruited quite 'hard' last spring, I noticed this pattern and made checking LI Jobs and Callisto a daily ritual.

#3. Little to No Intrusive Promoted Jobs

Although this might be a subconscious preference, I appreciate that there are not many promoted jobs on LI Jobs. If any, they are usually not intrusive to my internship searching experience. I have tried several other websites and search results would usually be cluttered with the 'Top 3 Promoted Jobs' on every page. This slowed down my search time and also created a huge distraction.

#4. Filters Rule

There are many job filters to utilize on LI Jobs, even for non-Premium users, which I am positive most college students can appreciate. These filters work very well for the purpose of creating a customized list of potential internships. My favorite filter: title, keywords, locations, and sort by date posted.

An example of what I regularly utilize as someone who is interested in a marketing internships:

• Title: "Intern" to filter out unrelated roles, i.e. full-time.
• Keywords (use 1-2 max): "Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Marketing, Social Media" to filter out unrelated roles, i.e. investment banking, software engineering.
• Locations (use one at a time): "San Francisco Bay Area" to narrow down opportunities within Silicon Valley and near UC Berkeley.
• Sort by Relevance may be useful for the top 5-10 listed search results. However, I prefer Sort by Date Posted to filter out dated internships and narrow down recent and new opportunities.
• Here's a bonus: Using the 'Company' filter is useful if you have set your eyes on a particular company. However, I rarely use this filter to avoid missing out on other opportunities (and mainly because individual companies do not update internship roles daily).

Filters: Keywords, Title, Location, Sort by Date Posted

--
Tai is currently a business undergraduate at UC Berkeley. He is ready to disrupt the tech industry with his infectious passion and energy for marketing! Learn more about his marketing and networking course at the Haas School of Business.

Reach out via email: taitran@berkeley.edu.
Connect and follow via LinkedIn.
Follow via Twitter.

Like what you read? Share, like, and comment. Follow me for more pieces on undergraduate education and social media marketing. You may also enjoy:

• Sustainable and Engaging Content Strategy
• Quantify Marketing Success with Metrics
• Social Media Platforms Marketers Should Focus on in 2015
• Opportunities and Objectives of Social Media Marketing
• Teaching Social Media Marketing and Networking at UC Berkeley
• Crucial Advice for Starting a Career During College
• Successful Tips for Internship Recruiting
• Top Qualities for Job Seeking Students During College

Image source: http://bit.ly/1JRzx13.