The Influences Of Social Media Use On College Students' Job-seeking:The Perspective Of Social Capital

Nowadays, as the main and active users of social media, college students meet new friends and maintain the relationship with them on this platform, building an open and diverse social network through social media. Sometimes, college students will obtain some employment information and recommendation in this online network, hence getting a job.In this project, the researcher designs a model according to the model of social capital of Nan Lin, and examines the use of social media of college students and its influences on their job-seeking experience quantitatively and qualitatively.Quantitatively, the correlation between college students' use of social media and the amount of their social media is examined through the method of questionnaire. Results show that there is no significant correlation between the use of social media of colleges and the accessibility and mobilization of their social resources.From the perspective of the three terms of social capital, the accessibility of users' social resources have significant positive correlation with users' bridging social capital and maintained social capital. Similarly, the mobilization of users' social resources have significant positive correlation with all of the three terms of social capital: bridging social capital, bonding social capital and maintained social capital.Qualitatively, the researcher carried out interviews with 16 social media users, including 14 college students and 2 employees who graduated from the university or college in one year, knowing more about their use of social media and how they utilize the social capital in their social media to help them find a job. The results show that whether or not the users employ social media and the resources on it to hunt for a job is determined by several factors: The demands for a job; the possession of social resources of contacts on the social media. Concerning the main functions of online social capital and their effectiveness, the researcher finds that the main function of social capital in social media is to convey information and provide emotional support to job seekers. However, this kind of social capital has very limited influences on the result of job-seeking. On the contrary, it is usually the strong ties that are cultivated offline that help job seekers find a job. This phenomenon not only has the characteristic of bridging social capital, heterogeneity, but also is in line with the reality of China that the ties must be strong enough. The toleration and openness of recruitment system and the social and cultural characteristics in China should be responsible for such phenomena. Meanwhile, the results also shows that once the users leave the college, their demands for more social capital stimulate them to pay more attention to the use of social media. According to the data analysis and the result the interviews, the researcher modifies the model that is designed at the beginning.The number of past studies that discuss how people's online social capital translates into specific emotional or instrumental return is very limited. Hence, in this project, the research tries to explore the influences of the use of social media on college students' social capital. Furthermore, this project focuses on how this kind of social capital is turned into real resources and opportunities for college students in such a specific cultural environment in China.This is the innovation of the project.The limitation of this dissertation is the relatively few samples and data, and the lack of research resources leads to the difficulty for the researcher to outline the specific online social network of the research participants and analyze their jobseeking behaviors on social media better. In the future, with the help of technology of big data and other research methods, these limitations might be eliminated and this issue will be discussed further and deeper.