How Strong and Weak ties help you find a job
In this research article by Facebook illustrates how strong and weak ties play role in finding a job, and discusses which tie is more effective than the other in certain purposes. It is given fact that networking is very very important in finding a job. But we want to know about who is more helpful: a best friend or an acquaintance. As we learned in class, and described in the textbook, strength of weak ties suggest that weak ties may bring in more novel information and spread information better. On the other hand strong ties may be better at actually ‘helping’. By analyzing employment start dates people choose to list in their Facebook profiles, there were a seemingly contradictory set of results: 1. Most people find a job through one of their numerous weaker ties / 2.An individual stronger tie is more likely to help than a individual weaker tie. To explain this result, we can conclude that weak ties are important collectively due to its quantity, whereas strong ties are important individually due to its quality. Based on my personal experience, I understood how this is true. For my past internship, I had networking with numerous acquaintances, meeting new people at info session. However, the most influential person who actually helped me (information about open position, referral) to get the position was one of my best friends who I spent time a lot with in college, and I eventually ended up working as an intern at his firm.
For the research, we say that A may have helped B if A and B were friends on Facebook and B joins the A’s firm after more than a year. That being said, this figure suggests that stronger ties had higher probabilities of helping a person find a job. And this lead to the conclusion that an individual stronger ties was more effective and helpful than an individual weaker ties. There are some drawbacks to this research. 1. It can be said the increased tie strength is associated with increased job help; however, it is hard to say that increasing strength causes it. 2. There is no data for all U.S people and friends, so the result may not represent the average U.S worker. 3. Not all interactions are through Facebook, so the measure of strength in ties may not represent the correct relationship in reality.
In conclusion, if one is currently unemployed and looking for a job, one should consider broadcasting job-seeking status to weak ties. Maybe writing a status update letting people in the network know that one is looking for a new job. On the other hand, target specific requests for job help to close friends, such as sending a message asking about their workplaces. The research findings suggest that time-consuming, costly communication should be directed at strong ties, but informing weak ties about job search is also a good investment as long as one can reach many weak ties quickly. This conclusion is aligned with the topic of strong ties and weak ties, and strength of weak ties we learned in class. I believe that this method of predicting tie strength through social media and its impact on relationship among people is very important in nowadays, and is a extremely interesting topic to deep dive in.
https://research.facebook.com/blog/how-strong-and-weak-ties-help-you-find-a-job/