Importance of a Social Media presence-LinkedIN, Internshala, & Portfolios.

The contemporary world cannot be thought of as an improvement from the medieval ages without taking into consideration the generous contribution made by the digital revolution. Furthermore, while there have been several technologies that have facilitated this process, the cardinal one is social media and its various professional platforms. Namely: LinkedIn, Internshala, and portfolios in general. 

To begin, while social media visibility is an important aspect of the prosperity of any business, it offers vast benefits for individual growth as well. For instance, author Susan Cooper states that it “engages, enlightens, and encourages” alongside “making everyone an asset”. Moving forward, while initially platforms such as LinkedIn were only considered to be pertinent to professional and business development and seeking out jobs, nowadays, even students trying to explore sundry career options have been creating profiles on such applications. 

Talking about the fundamental importance or primary motive of LinkedIn, it strives to build a community of individuals to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas through interactions across different sectors. Further, here are a few reasons for the necessity of LinkedIn:

1. Powerful Job Search Engine: One of the major objectives behind the mass popularity of this application is it presents a plethora of job opportunities across various fields. To explain, through its features such as #opentowork and I’m interested, job seekers can either wait for employers and organizations to contact them directly or vice versa in case of contact with managers and executives of particular companies. Additionally, it also displays the kind of job opportunities available and the potential pool of companies to select from, allowing an individual to conduct a thorough analysis before making an informed decision. 
2. Networking: Undoubtedly, one of the greatest benefits of a ginormous platform such as LinkedIn is the number of connections and networking it provides. It brings professionals in regular contact with one another and creates mutual connections with managers of potential interest companies, role models, colleagues, and businesses. Lastly, these act as an asset while conducting job searches, building portfolios, establishing business relations, etc.
3. Skill development and Brand Curation: Another sneaky advantage of the application that people often neglect is its ability to portray an individual as a brand to potential employers. For instance, LinkedIn possesses a network that can expand your skills through various courses and professional opportunities that it confers. Besides this, features such as LinkedIn summary, features, honors & awards, experience, skills, and interests, not only allow businesses to evaluate you as an individual, but also emphasize your strengths and potential assets for their respective companies. Furthermore, it allows them to ascertain if the job requirements form a suitable match with the employee qualifications. 
4. Unique tools & benefits: While there exist a lot of generic career-building tools on this application, several unconventional features further enable networking and job searches. For example, the app provides opportunities for individuals to display leadership and authoritative skills through features such as answers, skills, poll management, and group discussions. Additionally, options such as the alumni platform enable students to make connections with university classmates or even develop new contacts with those individuals who share their alma mater.  

Moving forward, having discussed platforms for professionals, such as LinkedIn, there do exist multiple platforms for students to seek internships. One such important platform is Internshala. To begin, the main intent of such a platform is to supply students with the necessary skills and practical exposure to act as a forerunner for them starting their professional careers. Moving forward, it includes sections such as the Student panel and Customer panel, which allow the curation of specific features. Moreover, it comprises a vast database of internships and jobs thereby increasing employment opportunities. Additionally, it has a provision of several filters to enable the visibility of only a specific profile of jobs. For example, filters such as remote/on-site, part-time/full-time, category, location, salary, duration, internships with job offers, etc help curate an extremely specific brand of jobs appropriate for the student’s interest. 

In a similar fashion to Internshala and LinkedIn, several platforms also exist for specialized job profiles or careers. These usually act as resume holders or portfolios in distinct areas and are of importance owing to them connecting people with similar interests and backgrounds together. While forums such as the aforementioned only provide the bare bones of an individual’s activities and accomplishments, portfolios provide a much more detailed version of the same. Additionally, they also include snippets or work samples of an individual alongside work references, certificates, extensive summaries, and much more. 

Given these points, several websites do allow professionals to curate specialized portfolios. Several popular ones are as follows:

1. Contently: It is a leading content marketing platform that is used by most tech companies while recruiting candidates for product writing, ghostwriting, technical writing, SEO writing, etc. It is an extremely important website for a freelance content writer and is essential for exploring a wide database of companies and employers. 
2. Muck Rack: This website is a must-have for journalists and public relations personnel both globally and domestically. It allows professionals to provide brief samples of their work and references in addition to a personal brief to allow employers to scout through candidates. Alongside this, it also gives individuals with similar mindsets and works ethics to correlate and network with one another.

These are just a few samples of the multiple websites that professionals might use for evaluating job opportunities and creating strong networks. In the final analysis, the true essence of presence on such platforms can be summed up through the statement “social networks are essential as they are the digital representations of what we humans do, connect and share.”~ Jeremiah Owyang