According to Psychology Today (2010), LinkedIn provides several valuable features for Psychology students if they are fully taken advantage of. The authors recommend several things for completing profiles such as stating the purpose of the profile, using a professional photo, obtaining colleagues recommendations and including psychology related keywords. The authors also state that it is important to keep your profile updated and as complete as possible. The importance of monitoring your profile regularly is emphasized as is using characteristics of psychology students such as being there for others and offering something to help others. This will create gratitude and others will be more likely to help in return.
Twitter can be extremely useful for students since it gives you direct access to notable personalities in the field. Since the field of psychology is collegial it’s important to know a variety of people one on one in order to get into graduate schools, find postdocs that aren’t advertised or be seriously considered for a job. While Twitter is extremely powerful for networking it needs to be supplemented with a blog or LinkedIn profile since the Twitter profile is extremely limited (Schawbel, 2009).
Plaxo is somewhat similar to LinkedIn as you can create a professional profile including contact information and a “pulse stream,” which lists other social media sites you are active on. The significant functions of Plaxo for psychology students are the ability to share a photo album and an address book that keeps all contacts organized along with providing a map showing where each contact is located. The photo album can be useful for sharing pictures of students engaged in professional activities such as research, teaching or presenting a poster at a conference. The address book provides a method of identifying contacts best to contact for different purposes based on locations (2009).
- Brooks, K., (2010). Career Transitions: Using LinkedIn in the Job Search. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/career-transitions/201010/using-linkedin-in-the-job-search - Schawbel, D., (2009). Top 10 Social Sites for Finding a Job. Mashable Social Media. Retrieved
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