As a former student-athlete, I know the challenge of balancing sports and career planning. That’s why I’m here to share what I’ve learned about making LinkedIn work for you.
LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool and can be invaluable in a job search, especially for busy student-athletes!
You spend countless hours in the weight room, at practice, games, meets, etc. Spending time creating a student-athlete LinkedIn profile that highlights transferrable employability skills is an excellent investment of your time. The goal is to get LinkedIn working for you in your job search while you are competing, doing homework, or sleeping!
The Value of Student Athletes Being on LinkedIn
Did you know the skills employers most desperately seek are hard work ethic, resilience, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving skills? As a student-athlete, you have organically honed those skills over the years to the point they are ingrained in you!
Employers are willing and ready to teach you the hard skills or technical skills required for your job; however, they can’t easily teach the soft skills or employability skills you have already mastered in your athletic career. Showing up on time, working hard, and being a great teammate and leader are invaluable skills you can highlight on your LinkedIn profile to stand out to employers and recruiters.
Once Your Profile is Set Up, LinkedIn Will Start Working for You!
That’s right. Recruiters are on LinkedIn daily, searching for the best-fit candidates who will, hopefully, become their company’s next employees.
As recruiters and employers search for keywords, your profile will appear based on matched keywords. As you draft your student athlete LinkedIn profile, there are some strategies to help optimize it and maximize your visibility!
Read on for more tips specific to creating each section of your profile.
Game Plan for Success: How to Set Up Your LinkedIn Profile
Your student-athlete LinkedIn profile will have these key sections:
- profile picture
- headline
- about
- featured
- experience
- education
- skills
- endorsements
- recommendations.
Before you begin working on each section of your LinkedIn profile, here are some things to remember.
Tell Your Story
Aa a student-athlete, a huge part of your story is your athletic career and accomplishments.
We want to highlight those well on your profile in a relevant way. While being a student-athlete has been a big part of your identity, we don’t want it to be the sole focus of your profile. There needs to be a nice balance.
Write in First-Person
By writing in first-person narrative, we humanize ourselves to readers. We become more approachable and can tell our story more compellingly. We want our profile to connect with visitors and inspire action.
Be Concise
Your profile is not your resume, but we still want to be concise. Visitors will skip over long paragraphs. Be brief, but be personable. It will help with readability and visibility!
How to Choose a Profile and Background Photo
When you choose photos for your student-athlete LinkedIn Profile, make sure you choose a high-quality headshot in professional clothing for the profile photo. Some student-athletes have a headshot in a college-branded athletic polo. Such photos make great profile photos!
Alternatively, you can choose a nice profile photo in business casual or business attire. The background photo that is a banner across the top of your profile could be a team photo, a photo relevant to the industry you are pursuing, etc. Using a team photo for your background photo is a subtle way to display the student-athlete part of your story while also demonstrating your experience working in teams!
How to Craft an Engaging Headline
Your LinkedIn Headline is visible practically everywhere. It will appear in searches (even on Google!), each time you comment, and it is one of the first components of your profile. As a result, it is important to get this right! Well-written headlines and great profile photos are what draw visitors to your profile for a closer look.
My most popular online resource is a blog about writing the best LinkedIn Headline! I provide two formulas to help students and recent graduates craft the most compelling headline to connect with recruiters, employers, and LinkedIn users.
When writing your student-athlete LinkedIn profile, use your headline to highlight your skills and goals rather than exclusively state that you are a student-athlete. If your headline only reads “Student-Athlete at XYZ University,” you will miss the opportunity to highlight key skills and keywords employers are searching for. Instead, we will highlight the student-athlete experience later in your profile.
How to Connect with Visitors in Your About Section
Remember that your profile should tell your story and establish your brand. As a result, your “About” section must impact your audience. If your About section is written effectively, visitors will read more. If it isn’t, they often leave your profile.
Components of a Good “About” Section
The About section should tell visitors:
- Who you are and how you got to where you are
- What you want to do professionally
- Explain why this work is important to you
- Provide the outcomes and evidence of your successes
You can assume visitors to your profile want to know what you can do for them. Focusing on why your work is essential and the outcomes you provide will help ensure the vital emotional connection that we have discussed in this guide is made with visitors.
The About section is where a student-athlete’s LinkedIn profile can shine compared to a college student with little involvement. Tell part of your athletic story here and help employers understand how the skills you have developed as an athlete will serve their team, organization, and customers/clients well!
How to Choose Content for Your “Featured” Section
The featured section of your LinkedIn profile is optional; however, this is an exceptional opportunity for student-athletes to highlight accomplishments!
Here, you can link news articles, leadership accomplishments, link websites and more! If you have been recognized for athletic accomplishments demonstrating hard work, named a leader on your time or across your campus, or featured in any other publications and websites, this is your chance to link that content!
How to Detail your Experience and Education as a Student Athlete
The experience section is a great opportunity for you to list your athletic team and provide insight into your accomplishments and the skills you demonstrated.
For example, if you have been named a Team Captain, you can list that and expand on your leadership responsibilities and duties. Did you lead a team, and how many? Did you mentor young athletes? Did you represent the team to officials and communicate with the press? See how quickly we can demonstrate leadership and communication skills with your athletic experiences!
In addition to your athletic experience, please list any job shadows, internships, or part-time work experience you have. While it is understood that many student-athletes have limited work experience, it is possible that you completed some volunteer work, held a part-time job, etc. All of that experience is great to put on your student-athlete LinkedIn profile.
Don’t Skip the Skills, Endorsements, and Recommendations Sections on Your LinkedIn Profile
Many students skip over the last three parts of the LinkedIn profile; however, these three sections can be extremely valuable! If you list skills relevant to employers and then get endorsements from your LinkedIn connections, you raise your visibility and the odds of appearing in employers’ searches! Don’t skip this step when setting up your profile.
As a young professional, recommendations can be powerful. Have your coaches, professors, and teammates write recommendations for your profile. Three is sufficient and can help set you apart from more generic profiles!
Networking as a Student Athlete
You may or may not know it, but your network of student-athlete peers and the alumni who were student-athletes at your university can be extremely valuable connections on LinkedIn!
Athletes look back on their years as student-athletes very fondly. Alumni who graduated a decade or more ago student feel deep ties to their university and are usually happy to connect with and potentially even help young student-athletes. Searching for graduates of your university and connecting with alumni you meet at events are significant actions for student-athletes preparing for their careers!
My Advice for Student Athletes: Be Active on LinkedIn
Aside from creating an outstanding student-athlete LinkedIn profile, one of the best things you can do to increase your visibility is to be active on LinkedIn. Download the app and try to spend 10 minutes on it three times a week.
Here are easy ways to be active on LinkedIn and raise your visibility:
- Follow hashtags – determine keywords and terms for your industry and follow those hashtags on LinkedIn. The platform will show content related to that term in your newsfeed. Then you can like, comment, and share content that aligns with your industry.
- Follow companies – Determine companies of interest in your industry. Who would you like to work for? What companies exist in the areas you’d like to live? Follow those companies so their posts, updates, and jobs appear in your newsfeed.
- Like, comment, and share relevant content—When you like, comment, or share content, you will appear in other connections’ newsfeeds, which raises your visibility!
- Endorse others’ skills – As you build connections, endorse skills appropriately. If you connect with a teammate, you can endorse their leadership and teamwork skills! Doing so will increase your visibility and help you gain endorsements in return.
- Join groups and organizations – There are infinite groups to join on LinkedIn! You can find student-athlete groups, alumni groups, and groups and organizations relevant to your industry! Join them for more networking opportunities!
In addition to being active on LinkedIn, it is important to keep your profile up to date. Please make sure you look at it closely once per semester and make necessary updates. When you make a profile update, you can share that update with your network and boost your visibility!
In short, we want your LinkedIn profile to have the right academic, athletic, and professional content balance.
Your LinkedIn Profile should tell your story, explain your aspirations, and connect with your audience. Student-athletes have unique skills that are highly sought after by employers!
I have a unique passion for helping student-athletes thrive professionally because I was a student-athlete myself! As a professional resume writer, I can help you craft a resume and/or student-athlete LinkedIn profile that stands out. Let’s connect so I can help you get your dream job out of college!
Schedule a free consultation with me today!
About Loren
I am a passionate career coach with over ten years of experience helping student-athletes and students with job searches! I specialize in highlighting your best skills and accomplishments in relevant and valuable ways! It is hard to write about yourself without feeling like you are bragging. Conversely, it can be difficult to connect your athletic accomplishments to what the employer seeks! Leave the strategizing and writing to me! Let’s chat today to see how I can help you land your dream job!
