Article 2

From Digital Culture & Society

Slone and Gaffney’s (2016) article “Assessing Students Use of LinkedIn in a Business and Professional Communication Course’’ examined how students are being encouraged to use LinkedIn as a tool for creating a professional online presence. The researchers analyzed student LinkedIn profiles, which revealed that many students neglected to fully complete the profile, thereby leaving out important information that would boost their credibility. Suggestions were then given to students to improve their professional online presence through LinkedIn.

Due to the increase of technology, job opportunities are beginning to change the channel that they originated from such as newspaper print. 80% of all available jobs are no longer posted in classified ads or even on Internet job sites. Recruiters use professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, to recruit and hire potential employees especially when “talent scouting” (Slone & Gaffney, 2016). This is a realistic assumption and appears to be an accurate statistic because communication channels are shifting to be more aligned with the digital world.

Slone and Gaffney (2016) also present four main reasons why students generally use LinkedIn, and believe these reasons are closely associated with the uses and gratifications theory;

1. Interpersonal communication
2. Online identity
3. Information
4. Career advancement

Overall, LinkedIn allows students to network with professionals, gain visibility and promote a professional identity online and provides them with a easily accessible hub of professional knowledge and learn from other professionals by viewing their profiles.

These are all strengths found within Slone and Gaffney’s (2016) article, because these key points can assist students in marketing their achievements and skills in order to gain employment opportunities on the LinkedIn social media platform. The uses and gratifications theory the researchers also presented alongside with the reasons why students use LinkedIn supports this. The uses and gratifications theory seeks out to understand why people use different social media networking sites to satisfy specific needs. The theory also assumes that audience members are not passive which represents how LinkedIn users should be when engaging with the site. A passive user on LinkedIn could suffer career-wise if they do not maintain their profile, update their qualifications or network with other users on a regular basis.

Slone and Gaffney (2016), wanted to answer the following research question: “To what extent do students’ LinkedIn profiles demonstrate professional online presence?’’ The study focused on university students that were enrolled in a business communication course. As an assignment, students in the course had to create their own LinkedIn profile (Slone and Gaffney, 2016).

When examining the completed LinkedIn profiles from the students, Slone and Gaffney (2016) used coding definitions and frequencies to organize the data results. There were three separate codes, and eighteen different criteria’s that were used to display the various frequencies of the profile aspects that were coded. For example, one of the criteria’s was “Professional Photo” which was coded as “Yes or No” and then a numerical percentage was used to determine the frequency of how many students used a “Professional photo” on their LinkedIn profile. Other criteria’s that were analyzed were: custom URL, headline, summaries, experiences, use of first person, multimedia work samples, volunteer experiences, endorsements, connections (i.e. followers) and recent activities. There were a few correlations of the data that came to light from the coding method; The higher the word count, and the more volunteer experiences listed on a user’s LinkedIn page resulted in having a higher number of connections and endorsements. There was no significant difference between students who had a custom URL and those who did not in terms of total connections. Students that had professional photos significantly had more connections then their counterparts.

The problem with using a limited number of criteria’s within the data results means that some aspects of analyzing the profile literature may have been left out. The ‘’type’’ of connections/followers that users had was not taken into consideration – for example, some students may have just had other fellow students as connections, but others may have had a CEO, Director or other higher professionals linked to their account. This could affect the forthcoming of information or experiences for students when building their LinkedIn profiles, because they may be embarrassed to put ‘Bartender’ as a past profession, if they are trying to be hired by an IT Executive.

The research was also very narrow, and left room for bias’s. The study was only done at one university, and only 31 students participated. This is a poor response rate and could affect the researcher’s results. A bigger population would have been ideal in order to have a stronger sample for this experiment. Ultimately, the assignment given to students, to create their own LinkedIn profiles can help students and instructors create a deeper understanding of the thought process involved in developing a professional online presence (Slone and Gaffney, 2016).

By: Natasha Bloomfield (Student #5735840)