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.
What gives strangers an edge over friends? Granovetter posited that close connections—people in the same circle—largely have the same facts and professional options at their disposal. But people who belong to different communities can offer a whole new set of information and helpful connections. A mutual friend can act as a bridge, connecting the job hunter to a contact in a different group, which provides new opportunities.
Developing experimental proof of this theory is extremely challenging. To test causality with the rigor of a randomized clinical trial, researchers would have to take two equivalent groups of people, experimentally manipulate their social networks by giving one group more weak ties and the other fewer and then observe whether the groups experienced different outcomes. But Aral and his colleagues discovered that LinkedIn had already done something almost as good.
These results could benefit job seekers pondering how to build and evolve their social networks. For instance, when it comes to LinkedIn’s suggestions of people to connect with, “you may not want to ignore those,” Aral says. “And if you get a recommendation for somebody, and you don’t see what the connection could possibly be,” they still might be worth exploring. “Those are the ... weak ties that might actually be the source of your next job,” he adds.