The strength of weak ties in the job market
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-close-the-networking-gap-11647525541
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/linkedin-social-experiments.html
I decided to explore the role of networks in relation to social capital and navigating the job market. The first article linked is written by Ben Wildavsky for the Wall Street Journal and explores how Mark Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” presents itself on the job market, and in the search for internship opportunities among students. Wildavsky argues that, while counterintuitive, the “strength of weak ties” theory holds in this context, because (I) close friends tend to socialize with a similar group of people, and thus acquaintances are more likely to be able to provide new connections and (II) because weak ties require less effort than strong ties, and thus are easier to maintain.
Wildavsky goes on to argue that this phenomenon further reinforces the ‘networking gap’, a term used to describe the gap between different people’s ability to build professional contacts, based on their available networks. A good example of how this relates to the “strength of weak ties” theory, is a networking event in college, for example, a career fair, where students network with potential employer representatives, who they are usually not familiar with. That is, these potential employer representatives are weak ties. Oftentimes, these connections can lead to referrals, which is a determining factor in whether students land a particular internship/job. In this example, the network gap exists between (a) Cornell students that were able to attend such events and obtain these weak ties and are applying to company x, and (b) people who did not have this opportunity and are applying to company x.
Source: https://www.reliantsproject.com/2020/06/10/concept-4-job-opportunities-and-granovetters-strength-of-weak-ties/
In addition, the second article linked, a New York Times article, summarizes the findings of a Social experiment that was run on Linkedin’s “People You May Know” algorithm, in light of Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” theory. The experiment’s findings were that “people with whom LinkedIn members shared only 10 mutual connections — proved much more productive for job hunting than stronger contacts with whom users shared more than 20 mutual connections”. This reestablishes that Granovetter’s theory, about the strength of weak ties, also holds in this day and age with platforms such as Linkedin.