LinkedIn is an excellent tool to help get yourself noticed, and to look for, network with, and talk to potential
employers. You should be proud of your study and extracurricular activities at the University of Exeter.
To complete Grand Challenges, you must set up a LinkedIn profile and include on it your University of Exeter
study and information on your contribution to Grand Challenges.
Go to uk.linkedin.com to get started. Setting up a basic account is
free and quick.
Follow the prompts to add details to your profile. Try to complete
the stages as thoroughly as possible, but don’t worry about
getting everything perfect first time – you can come back and
make changes later.
Hint: Choose a sensible profile picture! Make sure your face is clear, and
remember this isn’t Facebook – so no drinking, random scenery, friends
or pets in your photo.
When you’ve got the basics covered (including your
status as a UoE student), add a project to your profile.
In the project description, write around 300 words on
what Grand Challenges are and how you contributed
to your Inquiry Group’s outputs. Include any relevant
web links.
Why not… add the other members of your Inquiry Group as team
members?
Hint: we’ve made an example profile at http://ex.ac.uk/gareth
You must send us your public LinkedIn URL; no
other link will work. You’ll find this URL on your
profile, just below your photo.
Copy this link and then go My Career Zone and
open your Grand Challenges dashboard. Follow
the steps to send your profile to us.
You’ll be able to send us your profile from
Thursday onwards.
Once you’ve submitted your profile, your Grand
Challenges certificate will be available to collect
from the Career Zone from midday on Friday.
Your profile must include your University of
Exeter education and your Grand Challenges
project; otherwise you won’t be able to
collect your certificate.
Need more help?
The Career Zone web pages at http://ex.ac.uk/czlinkedin have more information about
setting up your profile and using LinkedIn, including a detailed walkthrough of how to
register and more info on what makes a good LinkedIn profile.
Our example profile at http://ex.ac.uk/gareth shows what information you should add to
your profile in order to get the most out of LinkedIn.
Try http://students.linkedin.com/uk for more information and helpful videos.
How to write your Grand Challenges reflective account
Your Grand Challenges reflective account is your chance to start to build your online professional persona. Many
students don’t have a range of past work and volunteer experience to draw from, so completing and adding your
reflective account will convey to potential employers how you have been developing your transferable skills.
Linked In has a “Projects” section that will allow you do this. Click on your LinkedIn profile followed by the “edit”
option and scroll down to access the “Projects” tab. Here you can input your Grand Challenges Reflective Account
using a maximum of 2000 characters (about 300 words), so you need to keep it concise and to the point!
You must complete this in order to gain the Grand Challenges Attendance Certificate and the Grand Challenges
Professional Development Certificate.
Preparing Your Reflective Account
You need to identify two or three skills that you developed during your Grand Challenge participation and provide
evidence of these using the STAR technique. For examples of typical skills/competencies that graduate employers
look for, see the skills glossary.
STAR
STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Results. It is a framework to ensure you provide comprehensive
information on what you did and what competencies you developed whilst doing it. The STAR technique is very
useful to answer competency based questions on job application forms and at interviews
For your Grand Challenges reflective account you need to describe the following:
Situation
Task
Action
Result
Give a brief outline of what your Grand Challenge entails (many employers will not have heard
of it). Also include when and where this took place.
Outline the nature of your Challenge. What was the composition of your team? What were
your duties and responsibilities? What were you aiming to do/ achieve/ accomplish/solve?
Describe the actions you undertook as part of that team. What did you do? (Remember to
highlight YOUR involvement, try and avoid sentences beginning with “we...”)
What were the outcomes? What tangible results do you have to show? What did you learn?
What skills did you develop in the process and how?
Once you have completed your reflective account, the URL for your LinkedIn profile needs to be entered into your
Grand Challenges progress screen in My Career Zone.