LinkedIn – Why this is the Key Ingredient for Irish University Students

LinkedIn in Irish universities

LinkedIn – Why this is the Key Ingredient for Irish University Students

LinkedIn is like being on social media and advancing your future career prospects. HomeHak is going to explore why this social network matters as a student. If you are a student, here are some of the reasons why you should be on it.

Getting Job Email Alerts

Firstly, once you have created your professional profile on LinkedIn, you can set email alerts to receive notifications of recommended jobs. Secondly, students and jobseekers will be able to see the notifications on their homepage as soon as they log into their LinkedIn accounts.

Connecting with Professionals

If you have a look at LinkedIn, you’ll be surprised to find out the large number of professionals who choose to connect here. In fact, you can find your friends, co-workers, colleagues, classmates and family members on this platform. Consequently, it’s never a tough job connecting with them all. What’s more, you can even import your email list to find out who among your friends is present on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn in Irish Universities - HomeHak
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Conducting Company Research   

One of the biggest benefits LinkedIn offers college students and jobseekers is that they can check out the pages of their targeted employers. By visiting company, pages, you can conduct a research on the whereabouts of the company, the hiring process and what people have to say about that organization. This kind of company research on LinkedIn can always keep a stay ahead of your competition and increases your employability.

Getting Recommendations

What’s more, LinkedIn also offers a feature through which you can get other people to recommend you. People with a maximum number of recommendations have a great chance of attracting the employers’ attention. College students too can try to get as many recommendations as possible to increase their employability.

Letting Companies Find You

Today, a large number of organizations look for talented candidates on social networking platforms like LinkedIn. If you have created a good and detailed professional profile, chances are you will attract employer’s attention. And it would really be nice to be invited by companies for your job position you always wanted to occupy.

Connecting with Other Students

Furthermore, college students can also use LinkedIn to network with other students. This type of networking gives a wonderful opportunity to find out how other college graduates found a job or got hired by an employer.

Check this article out to learn more about how to stay organised as a student in an Irish University.

To summarise

It’s about time that college students too created their profiles.It is time to start to use this social media platform for connecting with professionals. To conclude, prepare yourself as early as possible. You can easily stay ahead of your competition when it comes to landing a job of your interest. For more reasons to be on LinkedIn, check out this article.

Stay Organised as a Student in Irish University – The Importance and How To.

How to stay organised as a student in Irish university

Stay Organised as a Student in Irish University – The Importance and How To

There are  many reasons as to why you want to stay organised in college. First and foremost, it will drastically reduce your stress levels. And when you’re less stressed, you’ll feel better and perform better on assignments. You’ll also have more time for the things you enjoy doing, and you’ll just be a more pleasant person to be around.

1. Your Calendar

Calendars free up so much space in your head helping you to stay organised. Instead of having to remember appointments, classes, or due dates using post-it notes or scraps of paper in your wallet, you can have everything organized in a convenient, visual format. And if you use a digital calendar, you can automatically get reminders of important events before they sneak up on you.

 

2. Stay Organised with a To-Do List/Task Manager

You could use a whiteboard or a blank notebook if you want. What matters is that you keep an updated list of the tasks you need to accomplish, as well as, you know, actually doing said tasks. To make your to-do list, you should first create a brain dump of everything that you need to do on a regular basis. Here are some tasks that most college students need to do:

  • Homework assignments
  • Cleaning your apartment
  • Preparing meals
  • Club or society tasks
  • Anything you’re learning outside of class
Stay organised in Irish universities
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3. Your Notes

Taking good notes is key to staying organised, comprehending and retaining any lectures or presentations that your professors give. But taking notes on its own isn’t enough — to get the most value out of your notes, you need to keep them organized. For some people, this could be as simple as having a different notebook for each class and referring back to it when you need to study for an exam.

 

4. Your Class Materials and Files (Digital and Physical)

We recommend you keep all of your class materials organized either in a physical three-ring binder or in some kind of digital system. To stay organised, you could put all of the material in Evernote along with your notes, or you could have dedicated Google Drive folders for each class (other cloud sync apps like Dropbox and OneDrive work here as well, but Drive offers the best value for students unless you specifically need Microsoft Office).

 

5. Your Backpack

Your backpack (or briefcase or purse or whatever you use) is key for keeping all of these materials organized and at the ready. Organizing your backpack isn’t hard — the key step is to remember to fill your backpack with the things you need for the day. After all, there’s nothing worse than showing up in class, only to get that sinking feeling in your stomach as you realize that you don’t have the book or paper you need.

 

To summarise

Use a calendar. Make a to-do list. Organise your notes. Keep track of all class materials. Invest in  a comfty bagpack.  Getting organized is the easy part. How to stay organized throughout the semester is the hard part. We hope you enjoyed HomeHaks top tips for staying organised throughout your academic career!

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Better Notetaking – How to take the best notes in Irish University

Note taking - HomeHak

Better Notetaking – How to take the best notes in Irish University

 

Your guide to taking effective notes is here. Your days of looking back at what you scribbled down in class and trying to decipher useful information from them before a test are over. In this HomeHak guide, we’ll talk about how to prepare yourself to take good notes in class, introduce some popular techniques for taking notes, and cover the best ways to get the most out of your notes after class to lead you to better notetaking.

 

 

Better notetaking

Structured: The Outline

This is for people who like simplicity. It’s one of the easiest better notetaking ways to take notes, and it comes pretty naturally to most people. When taking your outline notes, start by choosing four or five key points that will be covered in your lecture. Beneath those points write some more in-depth sub-points about each topic as the lecturer covers them.

 

For Review: The Cornell Method

In this method, you divide your paper into three sections: notes, cues, and summary. Your notes section is for the notes you take during class. You can structure them however you like, but most people like to use the outline method. Write your cues section either during or directly after class. This section can be filled out with main points, people, or potential test questions. Use this section to give yourself cues to help you remember larger ideas. You can write your summary section directly after class, or later when you’re reviewing your notes. Use this section to summarize the entire lecture.

In-Depth: The Mind Map

The mind map is a great way of better notetaking for specific types of subjects. Class subjects like chemistry, history, and philosophy that have interlocking topics or complex, abstract ideas are perfect for this method. Use the mind map to get a handle on how certain topics relate, or to go in-depth with one particular idea.

Mindmap - HomeHak
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Expanded: mindmap

Jot down topics, draw arrows, make little doodles and diagrams and graphs. Go crazy. Engage with the material. Try to actively learn as you’re writing. Check out this article on how to create  a mindmap. 

 

Easy: Writing on Slides

Let’s be honest, this is better notetaking for lazy people…and there’s nothing wrong with that! It’s super effective, and it’s easy. If your lecturer is kind enough to provide you with the slides that they’re using in their lectures, go ahead and download the files and print them out at the computer lab. The slides give you a leg up on the outlining process. The professor already did the work for you! All you have to do is take notes and expand on key concepts already presented in the slides.

 

Visual: Bullet Journaling

If you’re super into aesthetics, like to doodle, or are a particularly visual learner, this method might be best for you. When you write in your bullet journal, you turn a blank page into a beautiful representation of your thought process. Try using it to combine different aspects of other note-taking styles.

 

To summarise

We have shown you so many ways to better notetaking such as Structured: The Outline, For Review: The Cornell Method, In-Depth: The Mind Map, Expanded: mindmap, Easy: Writing on Slides and Visual: Bullet Journaling. If you are intersted in more student hacks check out our other articles:

 

Essential Books Every Irish College Student Needs to Read in University

Books university Ireland - HomeHak

Essential Books Every Irish College Student Needs to Read

 

If you enjoy reading then you will love this article on our top Essential Books. This article includes  HomeHaks top essential books that you need to get your hands on now. If you’re looking to create a well-rounded, successful college experience, you can’t go wrong with any of these.

 

Pile of books
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Essential Books

The Power of Habit

As it turns out, habits shape much more of our behavior than we realize. The habits we do have largely determine the progress (either good or bad) we make in life. Luckily, the way habits are formed can be understood – which means they can be changed – and The Power of Habit is the best overview of how habits work that we have ever read.

 

How to Become a Straight-A Student

This book gives you an in-depth, well thought out method for pulling epic grades in all of your classes. The book is based around that fact that there are many college students who get straight A’s, yet don’t study for more than a couple hours a day and still have plenty of other things going on in their lives. It lays out effective strategies for note-taking, quizzing yourself, writing papers, and more. If you want to be like one of the aforementioned students, get this book.

 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This is a business and self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey. Covey presents an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls “true north” principles based on a character ethic that he presents as universal and timeless.

Confessions of a Recruiting Director

Author Brad Karsh demystifies the job-hunting process and shows you how to most effectively scout out and land that crucial first job out of college. He goes through writing resumes and cover letters and even provides a fairly large index full of completed examples of each.

 

Your Money: The Missing Manual

Learning to effectively manage your money should be priority #1 if you haven’t done it already. You’re most likely in college so you can get a degree and gain access to jobs with greater earning potential; make sure your degree goes as far as it should by learning what to do with the money once you have it. Your Money: The Missing Manual is a fantastic general overview of personal finance, and it’ll show you just how to keep those bills in the bank rather than blowing them on random things.

 

To summarise

The power of habits shows us how our habits shape much more of our behavior than we realize. How to Become a Straight-A Student teaches us how to get great grades in all our classes. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People gives us the tools to achieve our goals. Confessions of a Recruiting Director helps us to land our first job out of college. Finally, Your Money: The Missing Manual explains how to effectively manage your money. We hope you enjoyed our top recommended essential books!

 

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