“It’s a place for connection and a place for celebration,” says Zachary Clifton, a high-school senior and unabashed LinkedIn evangelist. “It’s such a celebratory, positive, uplifting environment. I think it’s honestly more wholesome to celebrate people’s professional or academic success on LinkedIn than to post on Facebook, which errs on the side of gossip or speculation.” (In case you need some generational translation: “Wholesome” is high praise from Gen Z.)
LinkedIn is also where Clifton finally spotted the summer job of his dreams — as a counselor for the New York Times’ Summer Academy, a competitive program for high-school students. “I’d been searching for the application for the position for months. I had DM’d them on Instagram and they told me to email them. Email them and they told me to call them. Probably reached out five or six times over the school year and I just couldn’t get answers. It was just like a big circle. I was shocked when it came up [in my feed] and it was super easy to apply using the app. Within 48 hours, I had done my interview and received an offer letter instantly.”
