John Hecht
5/7/2019
Final Project: LinkedIn
Professor Jonah Brucker Cohen
Over the course of time we as job seekers have relied on personal connections and local job postings in order to help us find employment. This made it hard for many people to expand their horizons and find jobs that are not so close to home. Luckily on May 5th, 2003 the way we found careers and employment opportunities changed for the better with the creation of a social media platform known as “Linkedin” . LinkedIn is an easily accessed business and employment-oriented service that is operated through websites and mobile apps. This social network improves the way people advertise and look for employment, it allows job seekers to inform future employers on the skills they have in order to work for their company, along with helping people to promote their work ethic and abilities across the globe. This gives job seekers many future job opportunities.
Linkedin was founded on December 28, 2002, and was launched on May 5, 2003 and is mainly used for professional networking. Professional networking includes employers posting job openings and allows job seekers to electronically apply for those jobs and upload their resumes. One of the reasons why linkedin was created was because there has been a major increase in the use of social media and the internet.
Smart businesses, like LinkedIn, adapt to social media and use it to promote their company on all social networks such as twitter, instagram and even college campuses and websites.Many colleges now make it part of their curriculum to create a linkedin profiles in order to upload their resumes for future jobs once they are finished with college.Social media also serves as a strong marketing tool for businesses and politicians. It allows people to connect with employers and companies in order to achieve the goal of finding a job. LinkedIn continues to expand opportunities for businesses to connect with employees, for employees to connect with employers, for both businesses and employees to market their strengths, and for both to create, store, and access statistics related to use, promotion, and success of their LinkedIn profiles.
The issue with the newer generation of children ( generations Y and Z) is that they do not have the motivation to apply the hard work into finding a job, which is looking through websites and newspapers and going from job to job asking if there is an opening. These generations are so used to navigating the internet and using social media that Linkedin is very adaptable for them. Linkedin makes finding jobs simple, there is one location where jobs are advertised and if a person is interested in the job and thinks they have the qualifications then they can submit their resume with one click of a button. Much of our current generation is just now slowly stepping foot into the professional world and we have all became very comfortable with using social media and the internet. We are not used to hard copied resumes but we are used to the layout of a social media platform and that may be a way some feel less stressed when searching for a job due to the familiarity with the platform. One of the reasons why linkedin has became a popular application to use is because many have said the the website has created a stress free environment when creating a personal profile due to the fact that it gives you freedom and time to search for what you what while also having the relaxing feel of a social media platform to make it seem more normal to an everyday internet user today. It is stated in the article “20 Reasons Why LinkedIn Will Be the #1 Recruiting Portal of the Future” “Because of its professional focus and its many uses outside of recruiting, it has become a standard practice for most professionals to have a profile on LinkedIn” (Sullivan, 2012).
Even though the use of internet has decreased the amount of work people have to put into finding a job, it also is widespread where one can apply for a job in California without even stepping foot there whereas the older generations would only know there is a job opening by calling and sending in a resume through the mail where that could take weeks on end with the possibility of the job getting filled by a local job seeker in that area. Linkedin gives you a different form of the old fashioned resume, it creates a personal aspect to it while also giving you a form of communication to explain if needed. Standard resumes can be very redundant and may not offer insight into the person’s life. Dr. Pamela Rutledge believes LinkedIn participation represents a shift in how people approach their professional lives. She says, “Social media has changed the way people think about accessing information. People have moved from hunting for “jobs” to connecting with people” (Rutledge, 2009).
Despite LinkedIn experiencing great amounts of success they do also have some weaknesses that I have came across. One of the weaknesses and concerns to some potential users would be the issue of privacy. When creating a linkedin profile the website requires users to provide their email address as a form of contact information, and also in order to verify the account being created is not a “fake” account. Some other optional information that can be provided includes educational background, a summary of one’s self, along with past and current employment. By including all of this information some users have unfortunately became victims of online stalking by other users, previous bosses and even random people visiting the website. Anna Rihtar, a twenty four year old woman experienced this first hand when her boss sexually assaulted her in the workplace. After quitting her job she began receiving threatening and harassing emails and messages on LinkedIn from her former boss. At the time LinkedIn did not have the option to block individual users, this caused her to create an online petition pleading for it to be offered. Luckily for Anna and many others, LinkedIn has added a block member option in privacy settings. Speaking on the feature Anna said, “We have come a long way to get here and we should be proud of our accomplishment” (Warzel, 2014). People can now feel much safer when using LinkedIn that they will not fall victim to online stalking or other potentially dangerous situations.
Another important issue with linkedin was the cost of service fee that is offered on the application/website. Many of the social media platforms we use today are completely free of charge whereas Linkedin has a multi-level membership service. “A basic membership allows members to run limited types of searches on other users, as well as maintain a profile and directly contact members within the user’s network. To gain access to the more advanced features, such as reference searches, directly contacting any LinkedIn member via email and the LinkedIn instant messaging system, the user must pay a monthly fee.” (Techwalla, 2016) This give the users that pay a monthly fee an additional advantage than those who do not. Most employers look for an aggressive job seeker who knows their personal qualifications and can advertise them well. So if a person with great communication skills and is overly qualified for the position, but doesnt pay the monthly fee it could take a longer time for the employer to notice that person. This can also be looked at as a positive because only people who are serious about finding a job and using the website will pay the monthly fee, so it can help employers fish out the serious job hunters from the mediocre ones.
The big question that many wonder is where will LinkedIn be in the future? An obstacle the creators of linkedin have faced is that they are struggling to make their mobile website as successful as applications such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.Yes some advertisements featuring Linkedin have been posted on those social media accounts and it grabs the attention of some users, but not many. Linkedin is a platform that many know of but are not eager to sign up for even with its employment benefits. This is a problem because, “91 percent of adults keep their smartphones within arm’s reach” (Conner, 2013). They need to do a better job reaching that large demographic if they want to see future success. This raises an issue for linkedin because there are competing websites that are used for job searches that can potentially make linkedin something of the past. As of right now however their basic model has made them a striving company. Although, a newer website named “Branch Out “ could pose serious threats to LinkedIn. BranchOut was a Facebook application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees. It was founded by Rick Marini in July 2010, and was, as of March 2012, the largest professional networking service on Facebook. Since many use facebook in their daily lives, “BranchOut” is something facebook with regularly advertise since it is created by their company so facebook users will be more persuades to used BranchOut rather than Linkedin because all of their personal information is associated with facebook so they do not have to create something separate. BranchOut is planning to work with Facebook and create a more professional atmosphere, something that could be trouble for the future of LinkedIn.
As one can see linkedin has expanded the reach of jobs one can apply to, made it quicker and easier to find job listings, allows employers to list job openings that they have and can find the dedicated future employees that are working hard to get their names out in the business world. But with the positives of having a website where one can search for future jobs in a stress free environment, there are also some negatives that come with the usage that is driving potential users away, allowing them to find other job seeking websites that could be the cause of Linkedin’s downfall. So where will linkedin go from here? Looks like we will just have to wait and see what the future holds for us future job seekers.
Work Cited
Sullivan, J. (2012, July 2). ERE.net. EREnet RSS. Retrieved , fromhttp://www.ere.net/2012/07/02/20-reasons-why-linkedin-will-be-the-1-recruiting-portal-of-the-future/
Warzel, C. (2014, February 21). LinkedIn Finally Tries To Fix Its Stalker Problem. BuzzFeed. Retrieved , from http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/linkedin-tries-to-fix-its-stalker-problem
Conner, C. (2013, November 12). Fifty Essential Mobile Marketing Facts. Forbes. Retrieved , from http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/11/12/fifty-essential-mobile-marketing-facts/
Rutledge, P. (2009, January 1). Why LinkedIn Works. Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. Retrieved , from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positively-media/200903/why-linkedin-works
Dontigney, Eric. “Disadvantages of Linkedin.” Techwalla, 2016, www.techwalla.com/articles/disadvantages-of-linkedin.
1 comments
Thanks John! Great work on this… I wonder why so many people are not signing up for LinkedIN despite it’s obvious benefits? I think there is an over saturation of social media sites that are all doing the same thing, so LinkedIn will have to continue to evolve to prove that it does what it does the best, etc….