Signing up with LinkedIn is simple. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Browse to linkedin.com
2. Click Join now or Join with resume.

If you clicked Join now:

1. Enter your email address and a password and click Agree & Join (or click Join with Google to link to a Google account).
2. Enter your first and last name and click Continue.
3. Enter your country/region, your postal code, and location with the area (this helps LinkedIn find job opportunities near you).
4. Enter your most recent job title, or select I’m a student.
5. If you entered your most recent job title, select your employment type and enter the name of your most recent company.
6. If you selected self-employed or freelance, LinkedIn will ask for your industry.
7. Click confirm your email address. You will receive an email from LinkedIn.
8. To confirm your email address, click Agree & Confirm in your email.
9. LinkedIn will then ask if you are looking for a job. Click the answer that applies. If you select Yes, LinkedIn will help you start looking for job opportunities.

If you clicked Join with resume:

1. Click Upload your resume and select the file to upload.
2. Follow any of the steps under Join Now that are relevant.

The Join with resume option saves you some time because it auto-fills most of the information from your resume. And just like that, your initial profile is now ready!

It is a good idea to take your time filling out every section of your profile. This helps recruiters find your profile and helps people you connect with get to know you better. Start with your photo. Here are some tips to help you choose a great picture for your new profile:

• Choose an image that looks like you: You want to make sure that your profile is the best representation of you and that includes your photo. You want a potential connection or potential employer to be able to recognize you from your profile picture if you were to meet.
• Use your industry as an example: If you are having trouble deciding what is appropriate for your profile image, look at other profiles in the same industry or from companies you are interested in to get a better sense of what you should be doing.
• Choose a high-resolution image: The better the resolution, the better impression it makes, so make sure the image you choose isn’t blurry. The ideal image size for a LinkedIn profile picture is 400 x 400 pixels. Use a photo where your face takes up at least 60% of the space in the frame.
• Remember to smile: Your profile picture is a snapshot of who you are as a person so it is okay to be serious in your photo. But smiling helps put potential connections and potential employers at ease.

Connections are a great way to keep up to date with your previous coworkers, colleagues, classmates, or even companies you want to work with. The world is a big place with a lot of people. So here are some tips to help get you started.

1. Connect to people you know personally.
2. Add a personal touch to your invitation message. Instead of just letting them know you would like to connect, let them know why.
3. Make sure your profile picture is current so people can recognize you.
4. Add value. Provide them with a resource, a website link, or even some content they might find interesting in your invitation to connect.

LinkedIn is a great place to find great people and great ideas. From technology to marketing, and everything in between, there are all kinds of influencers and thought leaders active on LinkedIn. If you have ever wanted to know the thoughts of some of the most influential and respected minds in a certain field, LinkedIn is a great place to start. Following your favorite people takes only a few minutes. You can search for people or companies individually, or you can use these lists as starting points.

Top influencers on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Top Voices 2020: Data Science & AI

On LinkedIn, letting recruiters and potential employers know that you are in the market for a new job is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Click View profile.
3. Click the Add profile section drop-down and under Intro, select Looking for a new job.

Make sure to select the appropriate filters for the new positions you might be looking for and update your profile to better fit the role that you are applying for.

Add to your profile to keep it complete, current, and interesting. For example, remember to add the Google Data Analytics Certificate to your profile after you complete the program!

A connection is someone you know and trust on a personal or professional basis. Your connections are who make up your network. And when it comes to your network, it is important to remember quality over quantity. So don’t focus on how many connections you have. Instead, make sure that everyone you connect with adds value to your network, and vice versa.

Adding connections on LinkedIn is easy. You invite people to join your network, and they accept your invitation. When you send an invitation, you can attach a personal note. Personal notes are highly recommended.

A great way to increase the number of your connections is to invite classmates, friends, teachers, or even members of a club or organization you are in. LinkedIn also gives suggestions for connections based on your profile information. Here's an example (template) that you can use to connect with a former co-worker:

Cold requests on LinkedIn are invitations to connect with people you don’t know personally or professionally. When you start to build your network, it is best to connect with people you already know. But cold requests might be the only way to connect with people who work at companies you are interested in. You can learn a lot about a company’s culture and job openings from current employees. As a best practice, send cold requests rarely and only when there is no other way to connect.

Recommendations on LinkedIn are a great way to have others vouch for you. Ask people to comment on your past performance, how you handled a challenging project, or your strengths as a data analyst. You can choose to accept, reject, show, or hide recommendations in your profile.

• Here are some tips for asking for a recommendation:
• Reach out to a variety of people for a 360-degree view: supervisors, co-workers, direct reports, partners, and clients
• Personalize the recommendation request with a custom message
• Suggest strengths and capabilities they can highlight as part of your request
• Be willing to write a recommendation in return
• Read the recommendation carefully before you accept it into your profile

Sometimes the hardest part of getting a recommendation is creating the right request message. Here's an example (template) that you can use to ask for a recommendation:

Ask a few connections to recommend you and highlight why you should be hired. Recommendations help prospective employers get a better idea of who you are and the quality of your work.

When you write thoughtful posts and respond to others genuinely, people in and even outside your network will be open and ready to help you during your job search.

Now that you have been introduced to the Kaggle platform, you can pause for a moment and apply what you are learning. In this self-reflection, you will consider your thoughts about your online presence and respond to brief questions.

This self-reflection will help you develop insights into your own learning and prepare you to connect your knowledge of Kaggle to your goals for your online presence. As you answer questions—and come up with questions of your own—you will consider concepts, practices, and principles to help refine your understanding and reinforce your learning. You’ve done the hard work, so make sure to get the most out of it: This reflection will help your knowledge stick!

As you get more familiar with the career options available to data analysts, you’ll find that it’s important to have an online presence. By engaging with the data community online, you can ask questions, learn new skills, and demonstrate your achievements to potential employers.

You’ve already covered several ways that you can build your online presence, from LinkedIn to GitHub to Medium. To develop a stronger connection to the data community and interact with fellow data professionals and enthusiasts, you can also build an online presence on Kaggle.

In addition to datasets, Kaggle has micro-courses, competitions, forums, and a large community of users. With the Kaggle Progression System, you track your progress and growth within the platform and demonstrate your data skills and savvy to employers and colleagues.

Profile features

To start on Kaggle, you should set up a profile. Your Kaggle profile page is a collection of all of your work and accomplishments on Kaggle. Check out an example profile page to explore how a profile can be used to share information: Heads or Tails

As you browse the Kaggle profile for Heads or Tails, you can also observe the work they did to reach high ranks in each category. They also include links. For example, they include a link from their profile to their personal blog and videos. This allows them to share their Kaggle profile with prospective employers in order to highlight their skills and progress.

Building up your Kaggle profile, or any other form of social media presence, takes time. Being patient with your progress and engaging consistently will draw more attention to your work.

Before moving into the next section, take a few minutes to look at different Kaggler profiles, and think about what they’re doing that inspires you. If you encounter a profile of someone whose work you’d like to follow, click the Follow User button on their profile.

To make it easier to get started on Kaggle, begin by reviewing how the Kaggle community operates. You can do this by reading through their Community Guidelines and checking out their Getting Started on Kaggle YouTube playlist. Then, spend time exploring through the Kaggle Winner's blog posts and checking out the Learn section. When you are ready to reflect, copy the url of a blog post that resonates with you, and be ready to share it in the upcoming discussion activity.

Consider Kaggle’s community features and how you might use social media yourself:

• How might you use interactive notebooks and the data community (specifically the curated blog posts and learn section) to expand your understanding of real-world data sets?
• How can you use Kaggle to help improve your social media impact and meet your professional goals, and how could your impact compare to the goals outlined in the chosen blog article?
• Imagine your ideal data analyst social media presence. What would you like to put on your profile? What type of data set would you like to create and share through your Kaggle profile?

Reflect on your professional social media goals and think about how you can enhance your Kaggle profile to establish an online presence.

Now, paste the url address of the blog for reference and write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Type your response in the text box below.

Explain: Great work reinforcing your learning with a thoughtful self-reflection! A good reflection on this topic would include how you will create your own online presence based on Kaggle’s features or that of another social media platform.

Taking charge of your online presence and establishing a record of your hard work is crucial to honing your skills and getting a job as a data analyst. Going forward, you can read through discussion posts that interest you on Kaggle or another data science forum. Engage with them by adding your thoughts or asking follow-up questions to improve your online presence and learn new data skills.