Practitioners’ Experiences of Social Media in Career Services

Autor: Jaana Kettunen, James P. Sampson, Raimo Vuorinen
Rok vydání: 2015
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Zdroj: The Career Development Quarterly. 63:268-281
ISSN: 0889-4019
Popis: A growing number of career practitioners and career centers are reaching out to individuals and community members in new ways by integrating various social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, into their professional practices (e.g., Dyson, 2012; Osborn & LoFrisco, 2012). To many, social media are simply online tools to share information and to communicate and socialize with one another. In the broader sense, social media is defined as a process whereby individuals and groups build a common understanding and meaning with contents, communities, and Web 2.0 technology (e.g., Ahlqvist, Back, Heinonen, & Halonen, 2010; Kangas, Toivonen, & Back, 2007).An extensive body of literature has examined the role (e.g., HarrisBowlsbey & Sampson, 2001; Sampson, 2008; Vuorinen, 2006; Watts, 1996; Watts & Offer, 2006) and the use of information and communications technologies in career service delivery (e.g., Harris-Bowlsbey & Sampson, 2005; Osborn, Dikel, & Sampson, 2011; Sampson & Osborn, 2014; Watts, 2002). Information and communication technologies in career services are continuously viewed as a tool, an alternative, and an agent of change in guidance (e.g., Barnes, La Gro, & Watts, 2010; Watts, 1986, 1996, 2010). Because of the relatively recent use of social media in career services, a limited amount of research has been conducted in this area. Existing literature has provided some examples and evidence that social media has considerable potential for career services (e.g., Bimrose, Barnes, & Atwell, 2010; Hooley, Hutchinson, & Watts, 2010a, 2010b; Sampson & Osborn, 2014); however, empirical studies on the use and effectiveness of social media in career services are limited. Recently, Dyson (2012) provided an example of using Facebook in career services; Hooley (2011) explored the phenomenon of career blogging; and Osborn and LoFrisco (2012) investigated the use of social media in university career centers and found that many career centers have increased their use of social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The three most common ways the career centers used social media were to provide students with career-related information, to connect with students, and to promote career services. Social media can also be used to develop job networks (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2013).Social media is fast becoming as much a necessity as an opportunity in career services, and practitioners' competency to work in this new mode is an area of increasing importance (e.g., Bimrose, Hughes, & Barnes, 2011; Osborn et al., 2011). Kettunen, Vuorinen, and Sampson's (2013) study revealed that models of career intervention and the ways of conceptualizing social media appear to be intertwined. Their findings indicated that, if the career services sector is to take advantage, to be innovative, and to fashion novel career service delivery formats afforded by new technologies (e.g., Hooley et al., 2010a, 2010b; Watts, 2010), it is necessary to support professionals in their understanding of the various social media tools and the ways in which they could be incorporated into existing practices. To do so, more detailed research on career practitioners' experiences with social media and its influence on career professionals' practice is needed.Consequently, the present study examined how career practitioners experience social media while using it in career services. The aim was to discover and describe the qualitative variation in the ways of experiencing the phenomenon. The study was guided by the following research questions: (a) What are career practitioners' ways of experiencing social media in career services? and (b) What are the critical aspects that differentiate qualitatively varying ways of experiencing social media in career services? This study lent itself to a qualitative research methodology known as phenomenography (e.g., Marton, 1986; Marton & Booth, 1997), which is specifically designed to investigate the qualitatively different ways in which people at a collective level experience or conceptualize a particular phenomenon (in this case, social media in career services). …
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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