A Massive LinkedIn Study Reveals Who Actually Helps You Get That Job

If you want a new job, don’t just rely on friends or family. According to one of the most influential theories in social science, you’re more likely to nab a new position through your “weak ties,” loose acquaintances with whom you have few mutual connections. Sociologist Mark Granovetter first laid out this idea in a 1973 paper that has garnered more than 65,000 citations. But the theory, dubbed “the strength of weak ties,” after the title of Granovetter’s study, lacked causal evidence for decades. Now a sweeping study that looked at more than 20 million people on the professional social networking site LinkedIn over a five-year period finally shows that forging weak ties does indeed help people get new jobs. And it reveals which types of connections are most important for job hunters. The strength of weak ties “is really a cornerstone of social science,” says Dashun Wang, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who was not involved in the new study. For the original 1973 research, Granovetter interviewed people late in their career and asked them about their experiences with job changes. Before his groundbreaking paper, many had assumed that new positions came from…
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