LinkedIn says your friends might not actually be helping you get a great new job
>
Your casual workplace or acquaintances in life may have more of an impact on your career than you might expect, new research shows.
LinkedIn has published (opens in new tab) the results of a five-year project with data from 20 million users, analyzing two billion connections between members and the effect they had on 600,000 new jobs on the platform.
Somewhat surprisingly, weak ties were found to increase labor mobility in digital industries, while strong ties had the greatest effects in less digital industries. Connecting with people less known to the individual was also found to increase labor mobility, although the effects diminished after a certain point.
LinkedIn People You May Know
The connections were split into two different categories: weak ties (just acquaintances and friends of friends) and strong ties (close friends, family and colleagues).
To understand the importance of networking, the study’s organizers — including representatives from LinkedIn, Harvard Business School and MIT — applied “randomized experiments” using the social media platform’s “People You May Know” feature, which reveals new features. suggests connections based on common interests, work and study places, and other algorithms. Essentially, some participants saw more weak links, while others saw more strong links in their recommendations.
While we don’t know the optimal level of weak ties, this study teaches us that having a diverse network is probably the most beneficial, which we can do by connecting with people in our own industry and with people outside of it.
Despite the positive result (i.e. we now have more data on who is helping us land that dream job), the study is not without its drawbacks. The register (opens in new tab) exposes an ethical concern raised by Michael Zimmer, director of the Center for Data, Ethics and Society at Marquette University.
He says, “The findings suggest that some users had better access to job openings or a significant difference in job access.”
However, LinkedIn researcher and one of the authors of this study, Karthik Rajkumar, claims that “no one was disadvantaged in getting a job.” Ultimately, this data will help LinkedIn and other networking platforms to suggest more relevant people in their algorithms.
- These are the best job boards for hiring new employees and finding your next job