Tens of millions of people around the world continue to look for a suitable job opportunity to earn a living and reach their desired career point. So, who are the people who can help you the most in your job search and ultimately help you find a job?
Here’s a new study of more than 20 million people, looking for the answer to that question. Of course, the answer to the question was not an answer to be named. Scientists have shown whether job seeking mostly through acquaintances and friends can work well. The result was contrary to your expectation.
First, let’s look at the theory that will help us in the research:
The research draws on a theory introduced by the American sociologist Mark Granovetter in 1973. Granovetter said of the idea of ”the strength of weak ties” that “the stronger the bond between two individuals, the more overlapping the friendship networks.” More generally, this meant that you probably knew all the friends of a close friend, but that of someone you knew less, you might know many fewer friends.
Putting this into the business world, the theory is that if you’re looking for a job, you’ll probably already know everything your close circle has to offer. But your job prospects may be higher with opportunities not from your immediate family but from weak ties, that is, from people you only know very little about. So, is this theory really reflected in the business world?
So how was the research done?
Researchers from LinkedIn, Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set out to find evidence of how weak ties affect job seeking. LinkedIn’s ‘People You May Know’ algorithm was used in the research, and the algorithm also became a testing tool.
LinkedIn, which regularly updates this algorithm, has now started testing the relationship between strong ties (close friends) and weak ties (acquaintances) in one update. More than 20 million people from around the world participated in the A/B testing on the platform. Users were divided into groups and each group was shown different new communication suggestions. Thus, users in some groups formed stronger bonds, while those in other groups formed weaker bonds.
The next step was to measure how many jobs were applied for and how many ‘job transfers’ occurred in each group in total. Job transfer was a particularly interesting area as it was finding a different job at the same company. This title indicated that the individual moved to a different job thanks to a new person he met.
Three important conclusions were reached:
- LinkedIn’s recommendation engine significantly shapes connection generation. Users who were recommended weaker links created weaker links by adapting to the engine. The situation was parallel for those who suggested a strong bond.
- The “moderately weak” group of acquaintances with 10 mutual friends and infrequent interactions were found to be more effective in presenting a new employer to a job seeker. Moreover, the difference was almost twice that of the strong bond.
- The strength of weak ties varied by industry. Weak ties increased business mobility in digital sectors, while strong ties worked in less digital sectors.
Although these three results show that the strength of the ties depends on the industry, on average, when looking for a job, they showed that you should focus on people with whom you have an acquaintance but with whom you do not interact much, not your closest ones.
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