Checkpoint 1 FP10
Kanyarat Suwannama ︳ Nathan Ge ︳ Mia Szpolski ︳ Usra Khan ︳ Zemei Jamie Liang
Authors (Names and Percentages): Nathen 100%
LinkedIn has been a ubiquitous career-oriented online platform that bridges the gap between job seekers and job recruiters with valuable services such as professional networking and job recruiting. Its extended version, LinkedIn Premium Career, which costs 29.99, enhances careers by unlocking exclusive benefits such as advanced search options and in-mail messaging. Nonetheless, is LinkedIn Premium Career a sound investment for college students that are actively looking for jobs? Insufficient research has shown that a premium account prioritizes a job seeker to the top of an employer search on LinkedIn. This research aims to examine the efficacy of LinkedIn Premium Career on delivering direct economic and monetary outcomes to college students.
Authors (Names and Percentages): Usra 85% Jamie 5% Mia 5% Kanyarat 5%
While this problem is a common issue among young adults it becomes more apparent that we start realizing the questions that could help us obtain an answer that will aid in a progressive career path. We believe that the research questions below will provide the response we are looking for.
Relatively to a Basic account, is LinkedIn Premium Career a better alternative to help students to get more job interview opportunities? Our Hypothesis is through LinkedIn Premium students will receive more job interviews as opposed to the Basic LinkedIn account.
Relative to a Basic account, is LinkedIn Premium Career providing a higher chance to receive networking-based responses? Our Hypothesis for this is that with LinkedIn Premium students will have access to more networking opportunities and will receive a greater amount of responses as opposed to the Basic plan.
Do students feel more satisfied with the LinkedIn Premium Career compared to their LinkedIn Basic account?’ Our Hypothesis is that students will present LinkedIn premium an overall higher satisfaction rating as opposed to the Basic plan.
Authors (Names and Percentages): Mia 85% Jamie 5% Usra 5% Kanyarat 5%
According to a report from Jobvite, 72% of recruiters use LinkedIn as a medium to find the right candidates, and 67% of recruiters say that LinkedIn provides the highest quality applicants. Other competitors mentioned in the report as social media channels that source the best quality candidates are Facebook, Glassdoor, and Instagram. This same report also clarifies that LinkedIn usage has gone down 20 percentual points since 2017 when its levels were at 92% usage for recruiting.
An important consideration when running our experiment will be to notice those outside factors that could translate into biased results. For example, according to both, an article on Fortune.com and the 2020 report published by Jobvite, spelling and grammar errors constitute 53% of the reasons that would lead a recruiter to see you as a disqualified candidate. Political posts and pictures showing body skin also decrease the chances of being considered in the pool of candidates by 32% and 30% respectively.
There are over 55 million companies listed on LinkedIn and 14 million open jobs according to LinkedIn News. 87% of recruiters regularly use LinkedIn, as shown in the Jobvite report. A study conducted by Statistic Brain Research Institute found that 122 million people got an interview thanks to their engagement on LinkedIn; 35.5 million people were hired by the recruiter they connected with on the platform. According to LinkedIn statistics, 3 people are hired through LinkedIn every minute. There was an increase of 6 times the number of remote jobs positionings added in the US from March to December 2020. LinkedIn statistics also show that employees hired through the platform are 40% less likely to leave the company in the first 6 months.
Authors (Names and Percentages): Jamie 45% & Kanyarat 45% Usra 5% Mia 5%
Population of Interest: Students in the US who are using Linkedin for job seeking
Sample Selection: Randomly select Linkedin basic profiles that are identified as both students and job seekers (have “Finding a new job” icon shown on profile)
Sample Size: 100? TBA
Operational Procedures:
A. Partner with Linkedin to get access to the database and select sample students that are not currently linkedin Premium Career users
B. Offer half of the sample group of students with Linkedin Premium Career profile (treatment group) a free trial for 6 months
C. Have another half of the sample group of students remained with Linkedin Basic profile (control group)
D. After 6 months, do a survey on the sample students about their career development using Linkedin in terms of their number of interviews they received from their Linkedin networks or linkedin job postings, satisfaction rate, and rsponse rate of networking opportunities
E. Statistical analysis plan for all three research questions and their perspective hypothesis ( specific t test procedures & interpration the test statistics)
Data Collection: Feedback Survey to include questions like : satisfaction, interview count, response rate, networking opportunities
Variables::
Independent Variable
| Independent Variable | Basic Account | Premium Career |
|---|---|---|
| Build a Network | Yes, only through mutual connections. | Yes, without needing to be introduced or connected. |
| See Who has viewed your profile | Yes, 5 views in the last 90 days. | Yes, unlimited views in the last 90 days. |
| InMail | Yes, only can send | Yes, both send and receive 5 InMail messages per month. |
| Open Profile | No | Yes, allows any LinkedIn member to reach out without InMail credits. |
| Advanced Search | No | Yes, more ability to search for company size, ranking, seniority, and etc. |
| Featured Applicant Status | No | Yes, job applications automatically sit above basic members. |
| Access to Salary Insights | No | Yes, provided detailed breakdown of salaries by job title and location. |
| Top Applicant | No | Yes - access to learning courses to build new skills |
| LinkedIn learning | No | Yes, without needing to be introduced or connected. |
| Price | No (free) | Yes, $29.99/month ($239.88/year for the annual plan). |
Dependent Variable
Average number of job interviews for students of each LinkedIn Basic group and LinkedIn Premium Career group.
% of networking response rate for students of each LinkedIn Basic group and LinkedIn Premium Career group.
Satisfaction rating scale 1-5 for students of each LinkedIn Basic group and LinkedIn Premium Career group.
Authors (Names and Percentages): Equally split
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