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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at FSU chapter.

I made my LinkedIn account one afternoon during my sophomore year. I was in a meeting for a club, and they were talking about how it is one of the best ways to not only make connections in your desired field but also to share all the work and accomplishments happening in your life. LinkedIn can also be an excellent place to search for jobs. 

Around that same time, I started attending career workshops. The biggest piece of advice everyone in these workshops would give you was to find people in the jobs you wanted and try to talk to them. This is easier said than done. 

I went straight to LinkedIn and started looking for people at the companies that interested me. I quickly learned LinkedIn doesn’t let you connect with just anyone. Most people you can only follow because you are not in their immediate circle of connections. I still found a small number of people in jobs similar to the ones I want and tried to connect with them. In most cases, I was met with an unopened invitation but in a few cases, I was able to make the connection. 

After I started making connections, I attempted to reach out in hopes of learning more about the positions at various companies. Most of these messages never received a response but that’s okay. The responses I did receive were amazing and the advice given was unmatched. 

I continued to use LinkedIn despite not having the success I had hoped for originally. I used it as a tool to share Her Campus articles and connect with other FSU students. I was able to make connections with speakers from different clubs and workshops too.

Somewhere along the way, I started trying to make connections with people in those desired jobs again. This time, however, I changed my strategy. I learned more about how LinkedIn worked and used it to my advantage. 

I was trying to connect with people I didn’t know. LinkedIn was made so that you could connect with people you know. The platform prevents you from just sending an invitation to connect to anyone but there is a way to get around that if you are willing to work for it. I figured out that connecting with someone made it possible to connect with their connections. 

So, what did I do? 

I went to all my favorite companies and started adding every available person that LinkedIn allowed. Each time I opened the app I picked a new company to explore. I quickly learned that there’s a max number of invitations you could send a week. 

I started maxing it out every week. 

When I started doing this, I really thought no one would accept because they don’t know me. I was wrong. Every day I get at least 10 new connections. Each new connection opened another layer of people I could connect with. It has become a game I can’t wait to play each day. 

In the span of about a month, I’ve gained over 300 connections. I have also connected with the people I really want to talk to. People that hold the positions I want the most went from being out of reach to people I’m having a conversation with. I have learned all about the jobs that interest me most and even some I had no idea existed before. My feed is also super fun to look at now. It is flooded with posts relating to my favorite companies and I feel like I’m really friends with these people now. I guess that’s the fun of social media, even platforms intended to be used for work. 

If you aren’t on LinkedIn, you should be. You should definitely connect with me too! 

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Peyton Gay

FSU '23

Peyton is a senior double majoring in Communications and Editing, Writing, Media. She is a member of the Majorette Line with the Marching Chiefs and she hopes to one day be a sports reporter.