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Strong Results from Weak Ties
John Sullivan is a working project manager who writes and speaks on project and career issues.
Surveys have consistently shown that most job openings are filled by referral, proving "who you know” is helpful in getting a job. However, “who you used to know” or “who you don’t know so well” could be more helpful.
In 1973, Mark Granovetter (then a professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University), published "The Strength of Weak Ties" in the American Journal of Sociology (Volume 78, Issue 6; May, 1973; pp. 1360-1380). His study of a random sample of job changers in a Boston suburb found that 56 percent got their job through a personal contact. But his key finding was that 84 percent of that group got their job through a contact they saw "occasionally" or "rarely." This confirmed the need to seek job-hunting assistance from people other than your closest contacts, the “weak ties.”
“People close to you know the same things you know. Weak ties move in different circles and can give you different information,” says Granovetter, author of Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (University of Chicago Press, 2nd Ed., 1995). “People get their jobs disproportionately through weak ties versus strong ties. Other studies since then [1973] generally bear that out.”
Granovetter’s findings contradict advice to focus on your most …
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"Be Yourself" is about the worst advice you can give to people. - Mark Twain |