Motivation

Employers’ use of social media in recruiting is prevalent, with the majority of employers using social media to screen candidates (Nauen, 2017; Driver, 2020; Salm, 2018; Elmer, n.d.). Many employers monitor and deny jobs to applicants based on their social media activity (Rathore, 2020). Some university graduate programs now use social media reviews to assess the online reputation of applicants (Hand, 2020).

LinkedIn is the most widely used social media tool for employee recruiting (Driver, 2020; Frederiksen, 2019). A Jobvite (2020) survey reported that 72% of recruiters are using or plan to use LinkedIn and to increase their LinkedIn recruiting investment (48% of large corporations and 33% of smaller corporations) in the future.

LinkedIn differs from personal social media sites because it was designed for professional social networking, career development and enhancement, and facilitating job recruiting (Sreenivasan, 2017). Firms use LinkedIn for brand identity, customer engagement, employee recruitment, and professional engagement (Cortez & Dastidar, 2022). LinkedIn can help students learn about the accounting profession, develop their personal brand, and engage with potential employers.

Most students use informal personal media every day (Auxier, 2021). Although students feel technologically savvy, few know how important having a distinct professional presence can be (Fisher, 2017). Similarly, few understand the difference between interacting socially with friends and communicating with professionals (McHaney, et al., 2015). Accounting professionals today use social media to learn, engage with new clients, connect with colleagues, and build reputations as subject matter experts (Stein Smith, 2016). Faculty can use the assignment to develop a student’s communication skills, discuss professional etiquette, and note post elements to avoid, such as spelling and grammar errors, descriptions of alcohol or drug use, political discussions, or provocative personal photos (Jobvite, 2020).

In completing this assignment, students can reflect on their own career interests and professional development when deciding which professional organizations to follow and in seeking their professional connections. Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) Standard A5 (2022, 22) requires academic accounting to demonstrate fostering technology agility. Coyne et al. (2016, 166) suggest increasing technology awareness and understanding by introducing multiple technologies and training in AIS courses. Additionally, completing the assignment allows accounting professors to offer career development and provide targeted feedback.

Learning Objectives

The assignment can help students develop competencies identified by accounting professional organizations, including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), and the American Accounting Association (AAA). Requirements reflect the needs listed in the AICPA (2018) and IMA (2017) professional frameworks, such as communication, professional behavior and judgment, technology tools, and relationship management (networking and online social skills). The assignment’s learning objectives are that students will:

1. Learn the attributes of an online professional business profile.

2. Create a professional profile to enhance professional visibility.

3. Increase technology agility by using LinkedIn features.

4. Use judgment to evaluate skill levels and knowledge expected of practicing accountants.

5. Demonstrate social behaviors and etiquette expected of those entering the accounting profession.

6. Demonstrate effective communication with accounting practitioners and faculty.

7. Build a professional accounting network to promote job opportunities and career advancement.

Table 1 maps the assignment requirements (see Appendix A) to these learning objectives and the related professional competencies.

Table 1 Map of Requirements to Learning Objectives and Professional Competencies

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Assignment Options and Teaching Suggestions

Students can complete the assignment independently, which will use minimal class time. The instructor can introduce the assignment by discussing the roles of online presence and branding in developing a professional network and searching for internships or career opportunities. Students can search for themselves online to learn how common (or not) their names are and to see the large number of personal social media posts that do not reflect a professional image.

Instructors can discuss the differences between what they might post on career and business-oriented platforms and what they post on a more personal social media platform. We provide a LinkedIn reference profile to demonstrate best practices for each assignment requirement. Instructors can use their own LinkedIn profile or the profile of a well-known local accounting or business professional as examples.

The assignment has ten requirements. The first nine guide students through creating a social media presence using LinkedIn. The tenth is a written reflection on the learning experience.

Teaching Suggestions

The complete LinkedIn assignment is provided for instructor use in Appendix A of this document. Most instructor guidance appears in the separate Teaching Notes document, which provides additional teaching suggestions, a table of student readings, a LinkedIn usage guide with screenshots, and a suggested grading rubric.

This assignment has been taught for several years at four universities in various accounting courses at the junior, senior, and graduate levels, with class sizes ranging from 10 to 65 students. This LinkedIn assignment is best suited for an AIS or auditing course, where technologies and communication skills are generally taught in the accounting curricula. We recommend using the assignment in second-semester junior or first-semester senior courses.

Instructors are encouraged to use a well-designed LinkedIn profile as a model for demonstrating the best practices of the assignment requirements. Relevant suggestions are provided in the Teaching Notes.

Efficacy

To assess the efficacy of the assignment, feedback was solicited from accounting practitioners (including practitioners who serve as adjunct instructors) who reviewed the assignment, other practitioners who used the assignment in an IMA-sponsored professional development workshop, and students who used the assignment in class. In this section, evaluation summaries are provided by these stakeholders.

Frequency Analysis of Solicited Student Feedback

After using the assignment for years at multiple universities, reflection memos were solicited from students. We selected a sample of 28 student memos from a junior-level AIS course and used frequency analysis (Weber, 1990) to derive themes. Table 2 reports identified themes and decreasing order of frequencies for analysis.

Table 2 Student Reflection Memo Themes and Frequencies (n = 28)

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The analysis also revealed that student comments were characterized as expressing the advantages of the assignment. The results appear in Table 3 in decreasing order of frequency.

Table 3 Student Reflection Memo Mentions of Advantages of the Assignment, with Frequencies (n = 28)

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Several students provided examples of how profiles were customized to enhance the connection and content recommendations from others. All students identified at least one advantage of the tool; however, 86% mentioned specific pros as part of their professional brand.

Identifying the disadvantages of using social media, specifically LinkedIn, was part of the assignment to prepare students for the healthy skepticism and professional judgment they will need in their accounting careers. The goal was to have students critically analyze the tool, and all but one student indicated the benefits outweighed the costs of using LinkedIn. The analysis revealed that student comments were characterized as expressing the disadvantages of the assignment. These appear in Table 4 in decreasing order of frequency.

Table 4 Student Reflection Memo Mentions of Disadvantages of the Assignment, with Frequencies (n = 28)

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Conclusion

This assignment helps students build their accounting brand images while exploring the breadth and depth of LinkedIn as a business-oriented social media tool. The assignment offers a guided career development experience using a leading social media platform and builds students’ communication and networking skills.