An Alfred University senior studying business noticed something most of her classmates had probably stopped thinking about: every business student at Alfred is required to have a LinkedIn profile, and almost none of them were taught what to do with it. That gap became her research question, and the basis for a project that sits at the intersection of professional development, platform behavior, and AI.
Alfred University senior Alina Zabihailo at the recent Undergraduate Research Forum.
Alina Zabihailo, a senior double-majoring in music and business administration and originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, is studying the roles LinkedIn and artificial intelligence play in shaping student employability. Her research—presented at the university’s Undergraduate Research Forum held Thursday, Aug. 22—examines how intentional LinkedIn use affects career outcomes, and whether students who engage with the platform seriously see different results than those who treat it as a requirement to check off.
The second piece of her project is more hands-on. She is building a chatbot that connects Alfred's course catalog and available majors to individual student career goals. The idea is straightforward: input where you want to end up, and the tool maps what Alfred University offers to get you there. For students who feel lost between their coursework and their career plans, the gap Alina is trying to close is a practical one.
Her research is asking something most career centers haven't fully answered yet. In a landscape where AI is reshaping how people find jobs and present themselves professionally, are students actually equipped to use the tools available to them? The early indication is that the answer is no, and that the problem starts before students ever open a job listing.
Alina graduates this spring and is planning to enroll in graduate school, in a program focused on business analytics and artificial intelligence. The work she is doing now ties directly into the field she is entering, which makes her undergraduate research less of a final assignment and more of a foundation.
Story by Andrii Maltsev ’27
