Leveraging LinkedIn: How Can Educators Help College Students Market Themselves?

Texas A&M University-San Antonio Texas A&M University-San Antonio

Digital Commons @ Texas A&M University-San Antonio Digital Commons @ Texas A&M University-San Antonio

Marketing Faculty Publications College of Business

5-2-2021

Leveraging LinkedIn: How Can Educators Help College Students Leveraging LinkedIn: How Can Educators Help College Students

Market Themselves? Market Themselves?

Ruby Daniels

Mark Dempsey

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tamusa.edu/market_faculty

Part of the Adult and Continuing Education Commons, and the Business Commons

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 1

Leveraging LinkedIn: How Can Educators Help College Students Market Themselves?

Ruby A. Daniels

Instructional Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Marketing,

Texas A&M University San Antonio

Mark Dempsey

National Convergence Technology Center, Collin College

Author Note

Ruby A. Daniels https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3008-2399

Mark Dempsey https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7527-5015

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.The manuscript has not been published

elsewhere and has not be submitted simultaenously for publication elsewhere.

Date submitted: Feburary 3, 2021

Note: For additional information contact: Dr. Ruby A. Daniels, Instructional Assistant

Professor, Department of Management and Marketing, Texas A&M University San Antonio,

One University Way, San Antonio, Texas 78224, [email protected] and/or (210) 414-3174.

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 2

Abstract

To successfully transition from college to career, community college students must be prepared

to sell their skills to potential employers. LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional networking

website, provides college students and graduates with an affordable platform to promote their

knowledge, skills, and abilities. Unfortunately, students often do not know how to communicate

a unique value proposition in their LinkedIn profiles. In response, the National Convergence

Technology Center (CTC), based in Collin College, developed a 30-minute webinar to train

community college educators about how to avoid common mistakes in LinkedIn. High interest in

the webinar as well as responses to a survey about the session indicate community college

educators want to learn how to leverage LinkedIn to help their students find jobs after

graduation.

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 3

Leveraging LinkedIn: How Can Educators Help College Students Market Themselves?

Importance of LinkedIn to Students’ Career Success

Growing interest in the employability of students after graduation (Chadha & Toner,

2017; Knight & Yorke, 2003; Sum & Jessop, 2013) has led to increased use of LinkedIn at

colleges and universities (Komljenovic, 2019). Approximately 40 million students and recent

college-graduates use the professional social media platform (Shield Intelligence, 2019).

LinkedIn offers numerous benefits to students, including helping them to find jobs, establish an

online presence, and network with colleagues and recruiters (Yavorski, 2021). While they may

recognize the importance of having a professional networking presence, college students often

do not know what content to include in a LinkedIn profile (Daniels, Pemble, Allen, Lane, &

Miller, in press).

To help students develop a professional profile, some business faculty members have

developed and tested LinkedIn interventions in their classrooms (Cooper & Naatus, 2014;

McCorkle & McCorkle, 2012; Sloan & Gaffney, 2016). Other researchers tested LinkedIn

interventions to help students make professional connections, seek internships, and secure jobs

(Peterson & Dover, 2014). While such educators recognize the importance of LinkedIn to help

students transition from college to career, teachers tend to be one of the least represented

professions on LinkedIn (Turner, 2018). Additionally, non-business instructors may lack the

background to help students market themselves effectively. Finding time to teach LinkedIn

concepts within the constraints of preexisting curriculum may also present educators with

significant time management issues. To overcome these challenges, the National Convergence

Technology Center (CTC), funded by the National Science Foundation and based in Collin

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 4

College north of Dallas, developed a collaborative LinkedIn webinar for community college

educators in the United States.

National LinkedIn Intervention to Train Educators

The CTC is funded by a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s

Advanced Technological Education program (Collin College, 2017; National Science

Foundation, 2017). The CTC’s overall goal is to better prepare students for workforce success.

CTC manages the Convergence College Network (CCN) community of practice that currently

consists of 80 community colleges and universities across 30 states. All the work of the CTC is

guided by the recommendations and feedback of an actively engaged group of information

technology (IT) employers and subject matter experts known collectively as the “BILT” – the

Business and Industry Leadership Team. BILT’s interest in better preparing graduates for the

workforce led CTC to explore the benefits and best practices of using LinkedIn.

To help facilitate students’ transition from college to career, the CTC offered a webinar

in December 2020 (Convergence Tech Center Collin College, 2020). The virtual event was

designed to help community college educators nationwide (1) better inform students about the

value of LinkedIn and (2) communicate how students can maximize the effectiveness of their

profiles. Of the 816 educators invited to attend the webinar, 98 individuals registered with 45

attending the live event.

The goal of the webinar was to share LinkedIn best practices based on a national study of

community college students’ profiles (Daniels et al., in press). After providing general

information about marketing, the webinar reviewed common mistakes in LinkedIn profiles.

Attendees then received a 1-page handout with best practices as well as a list of reflective

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 5

questions to help students prepare distinctive information for their LinkedIn profiles. The

webinar also provided attendees with an opportunity to ask questions in real time.

The webinar was recorded and later posted online for individuals who were unable to

participate in the live event. At the conclusion of the session, a link to a brief online survey was

shared in the chat box of the webinar. The survey’s questions assessed how attendees previously

taught LinkedIn, what challenges they observed when discussing LinkedIn with students, and

potential instructional changes in response to the webinar. A reminder email was also sent to

webinar attendees to encourage their participation in the online survey. In addition to some

Likert-scaled closed items, three open-ended questions allowed attendees to share thoughts in

their own words: Before this webinar, how (if at all) were you teaching students about LinkedIn?

What are the main challenges you face when teaching students about LinkedIn? Do you believe

you will be able to incorporate elements of this webinar into your classroom coursework? If so,

how will you incorporate it? Frequencies were tabulated for the closed questions and a content

analysis identified themes in the open-ended responses. To assure sufficient reliability, two

faculty members independently coded the frequency of themes from the open-ended questions.

Comparisons of their coding detected nearly identical results.

Results and Conclusions

Twenty webinar participants completed a post-event survey. Before the training, 24% of

respondents said they did not teach LinkedIn at all. Others reported teaching students about the

social media platform in various ways. Some survey respondents described having informal

conversations about LinkedIn with students (35%) during class. Others said they integrated

LinkedIn information into their classroom modules (29%) by including assignments, such as

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 6

requiring students to build a profile. Other survey respondents said they referred students to their

school’s career center (12%) for 1-on-1 guidance about what to include into a LinkedIn profile.

Respondents described various challenges when teaching LinkedIn. Some community

college educators (41%) observed student “reluctance to setup an online professional presence.”

Others indicated “getting them [students] to understand the importance of it [a LinkedIn profile]”

was challenging. Another 23% of survey respondents said teaching students how to promote

themselves effectively through the professional networking website was challenging because

students lacked prior experience in marketing and promotion. One educator observed that

students need to learn “how to sell themselves to potential employers,” while another

emphasized the importance of teaching students how to present a unique value proposition.

Survey respondents also mentioned challenges related to a lack of classroom time (12%), low

interest from other faculty members (12%), and insufficient knowledge about LinkedIn (12%).

Webinar attendees’ response to the CTC’s LinkedIn training was overwhelmingly

positive. Eighty percent reported being most likely to absolutely likely to recommend their

colleagues watch a recording of the webinar. Most survey respondents (80%) also indicated they

are most likely to absolutely likely to incorporate recommendations from the webinar in their

classrooms. Additionally, the vast majority (95%) somewhat to strongly agreed the webinar

provided high quality content that could be used in the classroom. For instance, after the

webinar, some respondents said they planned to:

• Emphasize the importance of developing profiles that makes students “stand out

from the rest of the crowd”

• Offer students on-campus opportunities to have a professional photograph taken

for their LinkedIn profile

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 7

• Encourage students to build portions of their profiles during their degree program

• Integrate a LinkedIn unit into the school’s existing ePortfolio assignments

• Share a video recording from the webinar with students and faculty

High registration in the live webinar as well as the number of people watching the session

online (122 views approximately one month after the webinar) suggest community college

educators want to learn more about LinkedIn. This conclusion is also supported by inquiries

posed during the live question-and-answer portion of the webinar, when attendees requested

permission to share the presenter’s information with colleagues and students (Convergence Tech

Center Collin College, 2020).

Implications

The results of this study suggest many community college educators recognize the

importance of LinkedIn to their students’ workforce success. However, feedback from webinar

attendees indicates significant challenges limit the effectiveness of their current LinkedIn

initiatives. Community college faculty members who lack a background in marketing often do

not know how to help students promote themselves in a LinkedIn profile. The study’s results

indicate it is possible to distribute such information during a short, virtual presentation. One

attendee shared, “This [webinar] gave me ideas on how to speak to students to help them

understand their strengths, so they can put their best foot forward.”

The overwhelmingly positive response to the webinar strongly suggests community

college educators are interested in LinkedIn but need more training. Students and faculty

members must recognize that a LinkedIn profile is only as good as the information contained in

it; setting up a profile is not enough. To “stand out from the crowd” and attract potential

employers, students must learn how to communicate a unique value proposition that

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 8

differentiates them from other job applicants. To accomplish this goal, community college

leaders must motivate faculty members to emphasize the importance of LinkedIn when working

with students. Additionally, the provision of innovative resources (e.g., photography services in

career centers, strategic guidance from marketing faculty members, in-person training and/or

virtual webinars) should help students create engaging, high-quality profiles.

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 9

References

Collin College. (2017, April 27). NSF awards Collin College $3.9 million grant.

https://www.collin.edu/news/PressReleases/2016-2017/20170427nsfAward.html

Convergence Tech Center Collin College (2020, December 10). Brown bag: Avoiding LinkedIn

blunders (Dec 2020)/National CTC [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/iUTetYPVqjk .

Chadha, D., & Toner, J. (2017). Focusing in on employability: Using content analysis to explore

the employability discourse in UK and USA universities. International Journal of

Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(33). doi:10.1186/s41239-017-0071-0

Cooper, B., & Naatus, M. K. (2014). LinkedIn as a learning tool in business education. American

Journal of Business Education, 7(4), 299-306. doi:/10.19030/ajbe.v7i4.8815

Daniels, R. A., Pemble, S., Allen, D., Lane, G., & Miller, L. A. (in press). LinkedIn blunders: A

mixed method study of college students’ profiles. Community College Journal of

Research and Practice

Knight, P. T., & Yorke, M. (2003). Employability and good learning in higher education.

Teaching in Higher Education, 8(1), 3-16. doi:10.1080/1356251032000052294

Komljenovic, J. (2019). LinkedIn, platforming labour, and the new employability mandate or

universities. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 17(1), 28-43.

doi:10.1080/14767724.2018.1500275

McCorkle, D. E., & McCorkle, Y. L. (2012). Using LinkedIn in the marketing classroom:

Exploratory insights and recommendations for teaching social media/networking.

Marketing Education Review, 22(2), 157-166. doi:10.2753/MER1052-8008220205

LEVERAGING LINKEDIN 10

National Science Foundation. (2017, April 21). Award abstract # 1700530 National

Convergence Technology Center – Division of Undergraduate Education.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1700530&HistoricalAwards=false

Peterson, R. M., & Dover, H. F. (2014). Building student networks with LinkedIn: The potential

for connections, internships, and jobs. Marketing Education Review, 24(1), 15-20.

doi:10.2753/MER1052-8008240102

Shield Intelligence. (2019, October 24). LinkedIn: In just numbers.

https://shieldapp.ai/2019/10/24/linkedin-in-numbers/

Sloan, A. R., & Gaffney, A. L. H. (2016). Assessing students’ use of LinkedIn in a business and

professional communication course. Communication Teacher, 30(4), 206-214.

doi:10.1080/17404622.2016.1219043

Sum, N. L., & Jessop, B. (2013). Competitiveness, the knowledge-based economy and higher

education. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 4(1), 24–44. doi:10.1007/s13132-012-

0121-8

Turner, B. (2018, January 5). Three reasons why educators should be on LinkedIn. LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-reasons-why-educators-should-linkedin-brian-

turner/

Yavorski, K. (2021). Why college students should use LinkedIn. Collegiate Parent.

https://www.collegiateparent.com/career/why-college-students-should-use-linkedin/