When did you start with LinkedIn? According to the newly published survey #FENOMENLINKEDIN 2019 conducted in the Czech Republic by Martin Hosek, most people start their LinkedIn profile after starting their first job (almost 30%). That makes sense at the first sight, as the common thinking is that you present your professional journey on LinkedIn. And most of the university students do not build their careers during their studies. There are a very few who focus on their career development already while studying. At least not in the Czech Republic.

And there are almost no high school students who use LinekdIn or know it. I dare to say that this is a global phenomenon. Not only local for Czechia. And so when I met a 16-year old student Jakub Zegzulka who started his LI profile 2 years ago (yes, at the age 14!) and has similar amount of contacts as me, I was puzzled and inspired at the same time.

We met at the #LinkedInSummit in Prague and Jakub was one of the speakers talking about his journey on LI – why he started and what is his strategy. Here are a few points he mentioned that can help you to create a more successful and efficient LinkedIn profile:

#1 Spend some time exploring how LinkedIn can serve you best. Do you want to build a brand or do you want to find a new job? Check the profiles of other people with similar professional / life stories as yours for inspiration. That’s what Jakub did when he first time opened a LI account and had no clue what to put there as professional experience.

#2 Have a strategy and follow it. Who do you want to target as your audience? Who do you want to have in your contacts? Jakub is a web, graphic and product designer, and his vision was clear – to penetrate into the professional network of likeminded people, to gain possibilities to do internship in well-known companies and of course to find new costumers.

#3 Create your profile in English when you want to have an international network or work for an international company. This was very clear for Jakub from the beginning. From my perspective it is a great strategy when you want to target a larger audience on a global scale. There is nothing worse than profile that mixes a local language with English and there is no consistency.

#4 Be polite and include a personal message when approaching a new contact. Jakub most of the time explains why he wants to connect. And I can say that I have a lot of people among my personal and professional network that do not accept invitations when not accompanied by an explanation or short introduction.

#5 Make an advantage of your disadvantage. Jakub is 16 years old and instead of being insecure or having a lack of confidence due to his age, he brought it up and put it in his headline to highlight that he is a young and perspective product designer. If you have something that you think it might be to your disadvantage, look at it from the other perspective and see how it can help you in your professional journey instead of being a showstopper.

Despite very young age, Jakub knows what he wants to achieve and he doesn’t seem to divert from this direction. He is very consistent in all his professional steps. The evidence is even his post-conference activity that I am adding as a bonus point.

#6 Update your profile consistently with all relevant experience. It was Jakub’s first public performance at the #LinkedInSummit and he already updated his profile mentioning this experience. Because he knows that it can help him to get more visibility and more opportunities. So do not wait until you are for the look out for a new job or a new client.

Using LinkedIn since 2007, having a few mentors myself on how to get best out of it and constantly following news on new developments through various channels, I thought there can’t be many surprises for me in this social network. Well, Jakub surprised me. And not only in terms of LinkedIn user experience and his approach to it. His professionalism and engaged attitude towards life is fantastic. He is a role model for many of his peers as well as for other generations.