A longitudinal analysis of professional social media use for job seekers and hiring organizations.
Project Description
More than 900 million people are connected to professional social media, and 82% of hiring managers use these platforms to screen candidates (Hartwell & Campion, 2020). Despite their widespread use among job seekers, workers, and hiring managers for professional - and now increasingly personal purposes - we still know relatively little about how these platforms are used and how useful they really are. This research sheds light on how professional social media can be effectively employed by both job seekers and hiring organizations.
The projects goals are:
- Understand why job seekers use professional social media and how they build their online professional presence
- Examine the role of professional social media use in job search success
- Investigate how hiring organizations can use professional social media to select suitable candidates
Building on earlier research (Fernandez et al., 2021), the project aims to dig deeper and explore how users interact with LinkedIn over time, going beyond basic profile elements. It seeks to assess the effectiveness of a complete profile, the strategic use of keywords, and which individual characteristics are signaled—intentionally or not—through users’ choices in their interactions and construction of their online identity. More intriguingly, it asks what these signals convey to potential employers. For example, can a user’s decision to post frequently or to look away from the camera in their profile photo reveal something about their personality?
This research will use key ideas from existing psychological theories to show how employers can rely on professional social media to find suitable candidates. It will also give job seekers useful advice on how to use these platforms to maximize their chances of getting hired.
