Linkedin - Advertising yourself and self promotion

We were given a fully detailed lecture on self promotion, covering the main do's and dont's of job searching and the preparation that should be taken before graduation. A main area in happened to be a website called "Linkedin". In all honestly i had never even heard about this although it was described as a wonderful tool to allow users to build their connections with millions of individuals across the work, opening up job possibilities that may have never been available elsewhere.

This was described as the hidden job market, explaining that a huge number of employers used the service to find possible employees, removing any need for putting out a physical job advertisement.

With this laid out, it has since become a very important task to for me to find as many links as i can on a weekly basis although progress has slowed down greatly lately as I have began to run out of possible contacts.

Currently I have gained 24 connections. I added multiple students on the course as it was only logical, that way we grow our connections together but on top of this, invitations were sent to every lecturer that had taught me for the past three years, writing a custom message to ensure I was easily identifiable at a first glance.

To keep my profile as professional as possible, I focused on adding my current skills to the profile alongside the most professional picture I could find. As my profile could be viewed by industry personnel through my contacts, it is essential this is kept in line although i don't believe a logo is really necessary. I have looked in to the use of logos for 3D artists but apart from business card use, i have found very little use beyond a custom font to be displayed on the portfolio heading.

I found that the best artists get to a stage where their work is so recognizable, it can be identified from style alone, providing its own advertising.

The current state of my Linkedin Account;

Alongside Linkedin, I found that even something as simple as setting my Facebook profile to private greatly enhanced my possible employability as this would be the first and easiest location for any employer to check before deciding on an applicant.

As a final pointer when it comes to putting my name out there, I removed any previous websites or attempted portfolios from the past, leaving only Squarespace. It may not be a great portfolio but it displays a selection of work, is formatted nicely with navigation in mind and can be built up without too many issues. Further research in to HTML could make this process much easier though for creating my own custom website template.

 https://jason-churm.squarespace.com/

I feel that to make a name for myself, competing in monthly environmental/ modelling/ texturing contests could be a great idea although these will have to wait until Christmas at least although with extremely modder friendly games such as Bethesda's Fallout 4 being released soon, i can use this as an excuse to create some assets for the public whilst providing myself with a huge library of feedback and critique alongside multiple similar assets to learn from.

Major projects could even be posted on websites such as Polycount although getting useful feedback for a junior artist can be near impossible at times.