Ankit Kumar - Building a LinkedIn Account and Growing Your Network Is Very Important (Student & LinkedIn Influencer From India)

I am Ankit, an average student pursuing my engineering from IIT Kanpur. Yes, obviously we have average students in IITK, it isn’t ironic. So, regarding my background, I have always been a decent and well-performing student during my schooling whose parents never have to go to school for hearing about my complaints, it was always the other way around when my mother would say that ‘Aap is aapne hi bachha smjho, jaise krna hai kar sakte ho iske saath’, but she also knew that there will never be a situation like that.

Tell us about your background & journey.

Hello readers! I am Ankit, an average student pursuing my engineering from IIT Kanpur. Yes, obviously we have average students in IITK, it isn’t ironic. So, regarding my background, I have always been a decent and well-performing student during my schooling whose parents never have to go to school for hearing about my complaints, it was always the other way around when my mother would say that ‘Aap is aapne hi bachha smjho, jaise krna hai kar sakte ho iske saath’, but she also knew that there will never be a situation like that. 

So, in my Class IX and X, I was obsessed with reading about news and general awareness and I regularly read ‘Pratiyogita Darpan’. For the readers who don’t know much about it, it is a monthly magazine which contains all the current affairs for the month. So, I am telling you about this to let you know how I dreamed about becoming an IAS officer. I even contacted my area warden about how I could have a conversation with the then Deputy Commissioner of Kurukshetra for guidance, yes I was obsessed. Moving further, my sister is four years older than me and was pursuing her engineering for a private college when I was in my Class X. 

One day she came across a pamphlet in the newspaper regarding JEE Coaching by Aakash Institute in Kurukshetra and from there I landed up there and was preparing for an entrance examination which I haven’t heard about before. I will not say I was forced into this, but how it works in a middle-class Indian family is that you are not asked or told about different career paths in the school so you just go with the flow. After the two years of full-fledged preparation, I didn’t get enough rank to land into an IIT but has got decent enough rank that can provide my admission at NIT, Trichy (best among all NITs), but here comes a new thing that was discussed at the start of my JEE preparation. 

As I natively belong to Kurukshetra, Haryana, we have an NIT here, so my father stated that you have to put your efforts to that level which will fetch you an IIT, then it doesn’t matter where it is located in the country you can go there. But, if that’s an NIT, you will need to stick by NIT Kurukshetra itself. As said, I took admission to NIT Kurukshetra in 2017. And when admitted, my father added that it would be great if you prepare for IIT one more time along with your college academics and try once more. 

I will not elaborate more for the next year at NIT, but yes I landed up in B.Tech (Civil Engineering) at IIT Kanpur and I am happy to say that I am satisfied with my decision of dropping out of my one year at NIT. Currently, I have completed my three years of education here and will be starting my last year in the coming August this year. 

I am not very inclined along to the core of my branch. That's why I have been trying various non-core opportunities that I came across in the last three years. I am currently pursuing my summer internship in the Data Science domain at Bajaj Finserv. Important question- How did I grab this opportunity? You can find that in the subsequent discussion.


What led you to start your account on LinkedIn & How did you help people with it?

So, one fine day last year during the lockdown one of my close friends Mr Mridul Jain were discussing our career prospects and what to do in the summer of 2020, so he suggested I make an account on LinkedIn and now is the day LinkedIn is the website/app which takes most of the time of my day among all other social media like Facebook and Instagram. 

As mentioned above, I am not much interested in the core of civil engineering and since we weren’t on our campus at IIT Kanpur the last summer so I was not much aware of the internship preparation for the coming internship session. As the internship session went on I knew that I would not be able to get an offer from the campus so I started my internship search for the summer of 2021 by September 2020 itself. 

I messaged around 4000-5000 people, mailed around 500-600 people, interacted with various industry professionals and gained various inputs from each one of them. In this process, I got offers from some emerging startups and among the big names, I got three opportunities in big names. I did my winter internship in the Supply Chain Analytics domain at Indian Oil Corporation Limited and currently working at Bajaj Finserv as stated above.

Since I knew how to use LinkedIn effectively, so I also helped some of my close friends letting them know about the new openings and then one day I made a post regarding the list of 100+ internship opportunities, it became viral and many people approached me for internship opportunities and guidance so I came to know that there are many people out there who are looking for opportunities so I started a LinkedIn page ‘Hunt for Success’ I post regularly about internship and job opportunities. 

So, as a whole, I help people in letting them know about new opportunities, such as a full-time job or internship, resume writing and resume review, career guidance, how to use LinkedIn effectively to get an opportunity from big giants in the market, etc.

How would you distinguish the term blogger from an influencer?

Ans- Both the above terms are very popular in recent days among the youth in the country. In my understanding, a blogger is a person who loves to tell people about something that he/she is passionate about. A blogger can be writing blogs about travelling places, life anecdotes, fashion styles and anything that he loves.

 On the other hand, an influencer is someone who does something that inspires people and attracts them to do it at the same time. This can be in the form of making videos/reels on Instagram, making memes, sharing your life experiences and learnings from them. 

So, how I distinguish between a blogger and an influencer is that an influencer is very much working for the audience which loves to hear back from him/her and a blogger just loves the way he/she has been doing the work without thinking much about the audience.

Share some pro tips for people to build their LinkedIn account & What benefits one gets from platforms like LinkedIn?

There is a myth among the community that LinkedIn is any other social media platform like Facebook or Instagram, so firstly I would like to clear this misconception of many out there. LinkedIn is a platform which in my opinion has only advantages and no disadvantages, so it is a complete win-win thing for you. Building a LinkedIn account and growing your network is very important if you want to take full advantage of the platform. 

There is not any ideal LinkedIn profile but you learn through experiments, there are many people who are experts in this and you can get in touch with them for reviews for your profile and you will get valuable and different insights every time you talk to a different person. Also, people have to first know the importance of growing your network on LinkedIn. So, how the algorithm for LinkedIn works is let us take a case where there are three persons A, B and C. 

Now, B is a person who is connected to both A and C but A and C are not directly connected. Now if this is any other platform like Facebook or Instagram, A will not be seeing any posts of C but on LinkedIn, you will be, how? So, your LinkedIn shows you the activity of your direct connection, so if B will be liking or commenting on C’s post then it will also appear in the feed of A. So, that’s why if you have a large network, then indirectly their network is also a part of your network. 

So, therefore, growing your network on LinkedIn is very very important. Also, as I have got opportunities in reputed organizations from LinkedIn itself, I suggest to all the readers to not undermine the power of LinkedIn and start using it more effectively.

Which is your favourite book & why?

If you will be taking a few seconds to look back upon how I have presented myself above, you can see that I am a person who is a keen observer and loves to tell things in a story-like manner. So, I also like books that are written along the same lines. I have read a few autobiographies, mythological novels (read many versions of Mahabharata), and many fiction novels. 

Out of all, I admire Playing It My Way, the autobiography of former Indian cricket player Sachin Tendulkar. I have read it two times, first during my JEE preparation days and second last summer. Since I admire the man from my childhood days, I also loved watching highlights of old 1990s games on the TV and always keep searching for Sachin on any sports channel. Reading about his journey was a dream come true for a fan like me. 

Also, if you don’t know about him (how dare you :( ), or you don’t watch cricket, then also you will love reading most parts of the book. The life anecdotes are presented in a very descriptive manner and bind the reader to stick by the book.


Interviewed by - Mukund M