While most of us are grappling with job prospects — or the lack of it — desperately combing through online portals or relying heavily on college placements, we are failing to recognise one powerful portal that can put us on the fast track to our dream job - LinkedIn. Urging the youth to switch to this medium is Rajalingam Manickavasan's new book LinkedIn - The Key to Your Dream Job.
Besides authoring two books on sports, now social media consultant Manickavasan has been delivering talks on LinkedIn to a varied audience - from corporate honchos to MBA graduates. The questions he was asked at these sessions always made him wonder if he needs to address these queries at a larger scale. The last incident which convinced him of the same was when a company asked him to deliver a session on using LinkedIn for recruiting purposes.
"That's when I knew that it's not just the job seekers who want to get on to this medium, it's the employers too!," says Chennai-based Manickavasan enthusiastically. Since then, this idea brewing in his head for close to four years found shape in his third book which he wrote in about three months. But there is a problem. The youth, though willing, is far from understanding the medium. "Most students use it as a social media platform, sending out requests to connect just because they want to increase their network. Or worse, they still use job portals" Manickavasan states.
Moving away from the rut of these websites which promise jobs to job seekers and employees to employers, Manickavasan implores that LinkedIn is a far cry from all this. That's where this book comes in, which breaks down LinkedIn for everyone, visually and step-by-step. "The screenshots which serve as visuals in the book help understand how to build a profile, from the most simplest steps like typing the URL to how a suitable profile must look," the 30-year-old author elaborates, citing building your profile as one of the most important chapters of the book. The book answers all frequently asked questions. "I want students to build a profile, reach out and have conversations and bag not just any job, but their dream jobs through the right connections," says the author whose next book might be on his own entrepreneurial journey.