Your outer circle of contacts is more important for your career than you think

The explosion in social media platforms in recent years has exponentially increased our ability to connect with family, friends as well as people we may have never even met.

And new research suggests these looser connections or “weak ties” may be more beneficial to our work lives than we think.

The ‘strength of weak ties’ theory, however, is nothing new. It’s been one of the most influential social theories since American sociologist Mark Granovetter coined the term in the early 1970s. He argued that weak ties can be particularly useful for job opportunities because they allow a broader social network to access new information.

A team of scientists from Stanford, MIT and Harvard universities, together with social media platform LinkedIn, have published the first large-scale experimental study on the subject in the journal Science. It suggests the ‘strength of weak ties’ theory applies as much to today’s digital world as it did 50 years ago.

Previous empirical tests of the theory had discovered that strong rather than weak ties appeared to deliver more job opportunities, the researchers said. However, “since these previous studies were not experimental, they could not reliably pin down the causal effects of weak and strong ties on labour mobility”, they explained.

In their new study, the researchers carried out a series of experiments using the LinkedIn data of 20 million people globally, during which two billion new ties and 600,000 new jobs were created. They focused on the platform’s “People You May Know” (PYMK) algorithm to test its impact on the job market.

“LinkedIn did a series of experiments so we could really understand the causal effects of tie strength… the size of the platform allowed us to do this all at an economically and statistically significant scale”, explained Erik Brynjolfsson who co-led the study.

The team randomly assigned more weak-tie recommendations from the PYMK algorithm to some LinkedIn users and more strong-tie recommendations to others. They then analyzed the labour mobility of the groups over a five-year period. They say the results confirmed that weaker ties raised the possibility of job mobility the most.

“It’s not a matter of ‘the weaker the better’ or ‘the stronger the worse’,” said study co-leader and Harvard Business School Professor Iavor Bojinov. “Our results show that the greatest job mobility comes from moderately weak ties – social connections between the very weakest ties and ties of average relationship strength.”

The research team also discovered that there were differences across industries. They say that weak ties create significantly more labour market mobility in high-tech and digital sectors. “This may reflect the fact that there is more rapid change and need for novel information and connections in those industries,” said Brynjolfsson.

Traditional methods used to analyze job markets are quickly becoming outdated, he added. “Policymakers need to recognize that the labour market, like all aspects of the economy, is being digitized. It is incredibly important that we understand how the algorithms used by digital platforms like LinkedIn impact the labour market, employment rates and the broader health of the global economy.”

Almost 3 billion people, or a third of the world’s population, lack opportunities to go online and fully engage with the digital economy. That is despite 95% of people worldwide living within range of a mobile broadband network, according to the Boston Consulting Group. Limited access to devices and lack of know-how is also hindering efforts to get more people online, especially in rural areas.

To help tackle this, the World Economic Forum has partnered with BCG and the UN Development Programme to create a digital inclusion platform. It aims to give policymakers, NGOs, regulators and analysts easy access to research and databanks. The Digital Inclusion Navigator is sponsored by the EDISON Alliance. It’s a 47-member group of governments, companies and global organizations tackling shortfalls in access to affordable online technology and participation in the digital economy around the world.