Reexamining the Strength of Weak Ties: Facebook and the Job Market
Research Article Referenced: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/686225
In this research paper, the authors reexamined the “strength of weak ties” theory, a term coined by the researcher Mark Granovetter. In Granovetter’s experiment, he found that when job seekers used their personal networks to find employment, they were more likely to cite their acquaintances as the source of the information before their friends or family. The tie between friends in a network is stronger than that of acquaintances, leading to the term strength of weak ties. However, this recent study brings to light some new understanding of the theory and the job hunt. In their study, Gee and Jones used Facebook to categorize participants’ strong and weak ties by using both Facebook interactions and mutual friends as a measure. To determine how their network participated in helping to land a job, the researchers looked at if the participants worked for the same employer as someone in their network, assuming that their network helped them to receive the job offer. This shows how modern research is conducted in the field of networks, where indirect means of measurement is often employed, such as using Facebook as a tool and looking for common employers among networks instead of more direct methods.
The paper discusses some surprising results: that strong ties are more useful to getting a job than previously thought. Weak ties are indeed important for finding a job, but the paper suggests that may be due to the larger number of weak ties an individual has compared to the number of strong ties. They show that there is actually a positive relationship between the strength of a tie and the likelihood of being employed at the same place. This contradicts the strength of weak ties theory, because it shows that the people to whom you have a strong tie might actually be more helpful in getting you a job than weak ties.
While the strength of weak ties a well-known theory, this paper presents a more nuanced interpretation. This study does not contradict that of Granovetter necessarily, but it does provide more information about the phenomenon, specifically that it could be due in part to the outnumbering of weak ties in most peoples’ networks. The invention of social media, which was not present during Granovetter’s time, provides more of a means of testing his original conclusions. The authors also conclude with the idea that the conclusions are dependent on the type of data and methods being used. This study is particularly exciting due to the increased understanding of networking in the corporate world, an area of interest to most people at some point during their life when they try and find employment.