More weak ties, more employment opportunities
Linkedin: the ultimate hub to “connect” with other people, explore new job opportunities, and feel intimidated by others’ accolades. Many other studies have shown the “paradox of weak ties” (which contradicts the notion that weak ties have value), but these studies didn’t perform experimental work and are therefore not properly justified. Contrary to what we’d expect, weaker connections (defined by two criteria: a lower number of mutual connections and smaller interaction intensity) who are similar to acquaintances would be better than stronger connections (defined as having the opposite criteria) similar to close friends would be better to provide new job opportunities. This shouldn’t be surprising as this conception of weak ties having some value was proposed roughly 50 years ago. Its importance is stressed in its ability to cohesively form relations between groups, but lacks much evidence from studies with large datasets over a long timespan, which a recent study addresses.
Relating to the “strength of weak ties” we investigated in class, this study conducted by MIT, Stanford, and Linkedin researchers investigated the use of weak ties in gaining new employment in an experimental setting with a significant amount of data. The study spanned over 5 years to truly investigate the weak and strong connections by examining the presence of (specifically) weak ties for a significantly large social network in which a large number of new jobs and connections were created. In addition, it is introduced as the first large scale project that tests the “strength of weak ties” relative to employment. The study later suggests moderately weak ties (defined by their number of mutual connection criteria) and other weak ties (defined by the interaction intensity criteria) created the most job mobility, providing evidence invalidating the “paradox of weak ties”. There was also a surprising u-shaped pattern between tie strength and job transmission observed (specifically when weak ties were defined using the number of mutual connections), suggesting the heterogeneity of the value of weak ties.
References:
https://news.mit.edu/2022/weak-ties-linkedin-employment-0915
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.abl4476
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392#metadata_info_tab_contents