:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2257157605-572f8b12daed40e8947dc73a1304173f.jpg "Like Many Others on LinkedIn, Indiana Football Star Fernando Mendoza Is #OPENTOWORK")
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Key Takeaways
- Fernando Mendoza announced his intention to be available in the upcoming NFL draft today, a rollout that included a post on the career-oriented platform LinkedIn.
- His move illustrated how professionals use social media not only as a tool for applying for work but also as a place to make a statement about how one wants to be perceived professionally.
Fernando Mendoza may or may not end up taking his talents to South Beach someday. In the meantime, he’s taken to LinkedIn.
The star Indiana University quarterback, who recently led the Hoosiers to their first college football championship, announced on the career-oriented social platform that he was making himself available in this year’s NFL draft. It was a scaled-back echo of LeBron James’s 2010 “Decision,” a made-for-TV event in which he said he would be joining the NBA’s Miami Heat.
“Let’s get to work,” Mendoza wrote Friday on the Microsoft-owned (MSFT) platform, though he made similar statements elsewhere online. “My LinkedIn status is now ‘Open to Work,’ he said in a short video attached to the post. (As for whether he might in fact play for his hometown team in Miami, that seems unlikely at present: Some experts believe he’ll be the first player selected, several picks above the Dolphins’.)
Why This Matters to You
Job seekers often use social media as a tool for detailing their experience and applying for jobs. But it’s also become a place where people can tell their personal and professional story the way they’d like it to be told, establishing expertise and expressing their aspirations as much as their past accomplishments.
Mendoza was looking for attention—and he got it. The status “hits different when paired with a Championship on your resume,” read a response from the company’s account. LinkedIn users—the site claims more than 1 billion—jumped into the game, with the post recently showing thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.
Mendoza’s post highlights the way LinkedIn users have found the platform useful not only as a means of putting a resume online and applying for work, but also for positioning themselves however they desire and making a statement about their aspirations. A scan of several other current and former athletes’ accounts shows them highlighting their investments, philanthropic efforts and venture-capital firms as well as their on-the-field exploits. (The site is also a way to stake claim to one’s identity: A search on “LeBron James,” for example, yields loads of profiles purporting to be the star.)
Among the hundreds of commenters on Mendoza’s post Friday were the inevitable crowd of folks seeking to build on Mendoza’s own celebrity. Some offered congratulations and exhortations to consider playing for their favorite teams, though others piled on with career and personal advice, mixed in with the occasional job offer and solicitations from eager wealth managers.
Mendoza, who played at Indiana as a graduate school student of business, has leaned into the bit. “Here’s what winning a National Championship taught me about B2B sales,” he wrote on LinkedIn after the Hoosiers’ title win—before admitting he was kidding, “kinda.”
