Far from being ‘Facebook in a suit’, LinkedIn is a platform that exists to share best practice and ideas, give testimonials to others, join professional or industry online networks and – sometimes – to find your next job. 30 million companies and organisations have a LinkedIn profile, and that 67% of LinkedIn users are between the ages of 25 and 34.

It is free to set up a LinkedIn profile and the setup guide leads you through it. You can then follow companies, universities or other organisations you are interested in, connect with and message people you know and join interest groups for areas of interest. Like other social media, you can also follow or search hashtags to read up on the latest discussions on a topic.

Inviting someone to connect with you on LinkedIn feels less intimidating than speaking to someone in person; just remember to include a message with your invitation to say why you’re asking to connect with them. At the time of writing this article, you can only include a message on the desktop version and not on the mobile app.

If you’re serious about entering the world of work at some point, it’s never too early to start building your network on LinkedIn. To call LinkedIn a social media platform is to misunderstand its purpose and its potential. You only have to look at some of the statistics to see why:

• Someone is hired through LinkedIn every 7 seconds

• 55 job applications are submitted every second

• People in 200 countries and regions are on LinkedIn

• 75,000 freelancers find new contracts

• 2 million small businesses regularly use LinkedIn to hire staff

• LinkedIn now has 690 million members worldwide

(data from LinkedIn, May 2020)