Strong Ties v.s. Weak Ties in Job Searching
Source : A team of MIT, Harvard and Stanford scientist | EurekAlert!
In class we learned about the different strengths of strong and weak ties. Strong ties among people allow people to have greater trust than weak ties. Weak ties among people increase access to information since weak ties connects people from different clusters of people, unlike strong ties. Therefore weak ties serve as an amplifier for creativity and can lead to new opportunity. In the source I found above, we see a more specific application of strong ties’ and weak ties’ effects : job mobility.
The source above it talks about strong and weak ties’ effects on job mobility. From conducting a five-year experiment through LinkedIn on 20 million people, researchers have found that weaker ties have increased the chance of job mobility the most and stronger ties increased the chance of job mobility the least. This finding aligns with the effects of weak ties because weak ties among people can give many new kinds of information compared to strong ties. New kind of information can expose an individual to many different kinds of jobs. Since the individual is exposed to more kinds of jobs, the individual would be more inclined to apply to more jobs which is why the individual with weak ties would have increased job mobility compared to the with stronger ties. Researchers also found that these difference between weak ties and strong ties seem to be the strongest in digital industries which may be because people who work at digital industries would be more inclined to use only job searching sources like LinkedIn.