How to find a graduate job using social media For most students, using social media and applying for graduate jobs are entirely separate activities. After all, status updates about your "excellent communication skills" and A* in English Literature are as likely to interest your friends as embarrassing drunken photos are likely to impress prospective employers. Over 90 per cent of employers will use social recruiting, and among the many tools available to students you would do well consider your professional online brand using LinkedIn. From a professional-looking photo, keyword-aware headline statement and summary section, to identifying your top skills and achieving an "all-star" profile, there are many aspects to building an online presence that reflects your career ambitions. A useful framework for preparing your 120-character maximum headline statement is to consider your skills, qualifications, experiences, attributes and knowledge in the form of an impact statement. Many students need to move beyond the "Student at University" headline commonly seen for university students to something more aspirational, for example: "MSc Management student at LUMS / Founder Lancaster University South-East European Society / seeking graduate analyst role / Consultancy." As in your CV, you need to say more with less, and think about your past achievements and future ambitions, considering the language of the industry and company of interest. This improves your chances of appearing in the search results of potential recruiters, businesses and suppliers. There are currently over 2.9 million company pages on LinkedIn, which means you have access to local and global companies from HP (who recently exceeded 1 million followers) to Tata Consultancy Services (India). Use the company pages to research, be the first to share breaking news of new products and services and let your network know about your passion and interest for a particular industry. You can also see new jobs and which companies people have joined. As a student you can use LinkedIn to research companies before an interview, analyse patterns of people who have joined and move on and begin to generate your own career ideas. Both employers and university careers services are increasingly placing emphasis on Facebook and LinkedIn with targeted campaigns. There are over 1.6 million groups on LinkedIn - check out if your university alumni group have a presence (if not, why not create one), join the group and seek out groups either in the UK or overseas that you could join. Groups will allow you to accelerate your career ambitions in ways not possible previously. Ajaz Hussain is Postgraduate Careers Adviser at Lancaster University Management School. Student Life: Student's guide to social media Why tipsy Facebook photos beat no online presence at all