Future trainee solicitor and final year LLB student at LSE, Sabrina Daniel, shares her top tips for growing your network and building meaningful relationships on LinkedIn as a student.

I arrived at LSE with less than 100 connections on LinkedIn. Over the last two years, I have grown my network to over 3,000 followers and from my growing network, I’ve received two internship offers and a senior volunteering position within a large social mobility charity. I am now a future trainee solicitor in my final year at LSE as an LLB student. Here is how I have approached networking and utilised LinkedIn!

Growing your LinkedIn network

I grew my LinkedIn network by actively sharing my journey on LinkedIn. This is how I did it:

Posting small wins

I began to post everything including small wins like obtaining a place at a law firm’s open day. By doing so, I not only shared my progress but also attracted like-minded students who were pursuing law and studying at university. This created a sense of community and support among my connections.

Sharing event experiences

I made it a habit to post about the events I attended, providing insights such as what I learnt, and tagging the people I met and engaged with so they’d add me back and keep in touch.

Sharing my internship and job offers

In my second year, I began to post my internship offers and eventually my job offer. This attracted lots of people including those who worked at those organisations (for example Bloomberg), interns that would be on my internship, people interested in getting an internship there and those who actually work for the company. On these posts, I would get hundreds of likes and thousands of views which increased my engagement.

Engaging with other people’s content

Lastly, I actively engaged with other people’s content. When someone would post an offer or an achievement, I would like the post and comment. Because of this, I began to make friends on LinkedIn and they in turn would engage with my posts. This massively grew my account because the more people engage with your posts, the more it ends up on other people’s feeds.

Establishing and building relationships on LinkedIn

So that’s how I grew my connections on LinkedIn. But how did I then actually use my connections to establish and build relationships? Here are some of the steps I took:

Connecting with professionals from events

For instance, after attending a conference at the Tony Blair Institute last year, I connected with an analyst I had a meaningful conversation with. I added her on LinkedIn and decided to follow up. Messaging her on LinkedIn, I asked more about her role and after going back and forth, I asked if they do internships. She said not for undergraduates but gave me the email account of the head of early talent recruitment who I emailed with my CV and a link to my LinkedIn which, because I had been documenting my journey, was up to date and contained my achievements and experience. From this, I was offered a summer internship at the TBI which I did this summer.

Scheduling coffee chats with young professionals

I’ve leveraged my LinkedIn by reaching out to young professionals for coffee chats. My approach is simple and genuine: “Hi, I’m Sabrina, a final year law student at LSE. I’m keen on applying to X firm, and I would greatly appreciate it if we could meet for coffee at your convenience. I’d love to ask you a few questions about your career journey.” I say ‘young’ because it’s unlikely a busy partner is going to reply.

Showcasing and posting about personal interests

I have also built relationships by utilising LinkedIn to showcase my personal interests, not just my academic and career-related achievements. For instance, I posted about VC one time (in this instance, I posted about an internship offer I had received which signalled to everyone that I was interested in VC) and a lawyer who was leaving law to create a start up reached out to me because he had seen my post about VC. He extended an internship offer for me to join his startup and help with its launch.

Following people in organisations of interest and staying up-to-date with what’s happening

Finally, I follow people I look up to in various sectors and organisations I’m interested in working for in the future. This way I’ll see their updates and know if there are any job openings.