I feel this week’s readings have
especial application for me in my search for gainful employment. Utilizing my social
network has been both good and bad—that is to say I have been both successful
and unsuccessful in exploiting my connections. Let me explain.
Levin and Cross do a great job of
explaining the strength of weak ties, and for me these have actually proven the
most productive in producing interviews. As we learned in the reading a weak
tie is essentially one we have outside our own social networks-friend of a
friend sorts of ties (Levin & Cross, 2004). I am pretty liberal in calling
people friends these days (thanks Facebook) but in reviewing the people that
have referred me to various positions almost all of them have been people that
I stay in touch with simply because of another tie that I maintain more
thoughtfully. For example one contact-I will call him Adam-has referred me to
multiple positions at his organization in the last 6 weeks.
Adam and I have met and exchanged
social niceties at various gatherings, but by no means would I consider him a
strong tie. My strong tie would be a mutual friend who I’ll call Brad. When
Brad found out that I was unemployed he was quick to offer his support in my
personal life, but has been far less productive in helping me find gainful
employment. This experience hasn’t been with just him either; it has been
almost universal across the board. All positions that I have been directly
referred to (the count is to 7 now) have come from weak ties.
I of course became very curious
about this as I worked through the week’s readings. Am I not taking full
advantage of my network like some of the managers in the Ibarra and Hunter
piece (2007)? Maybe I just need to make my invisible network work for me more
by looking for weak links, bow ties, or other anomalies (Cross, Borgatti, &
Parker, 2002)? I know that some of my network ties are very well linked to the industries I am interested in, but I haven't seen much response from them other than the consolatory 'things will work out.' It seemed like a bit of a puzzle so I actually called my friend
Brad to talk it over (made for a slightly awkward conversation, but fortunately
leading in with our class topic for the week helped.) I was pretty straight
forward in asking why he hadn’t suggested any jobs or referred me to any of his
network, and his answer was equally blunt: he felt he knew me too well, that I
wouldn’t fit/or want the positions he was aware of. We talked for a few minutes
about this, and he does know me pretty well, but as it turns out a fair amount
of his network could benefit from a person like me.
The take away for me was that we
can never be too confident in our networks, even our strong ties. These are
things that are in constant need of nutrition, if you will. This week’s
readings and my conversation with Brad opened me up to being more frank with my
direct network, utilizing their connections, and being more proactive in
keeping my network aware of my ‘status’ updates.
References
Cross, R.,
Borgatti, S., and Parker, A. (2002) Making Invisible Work Visible: Using Social
Network Analysis to Support Strategic Collaboration, California
Management Review, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 25-46 (full article)
Ibarra, H., and
Hunter, M. (2007) How Leaders Create and Use Networks, Harvard Business
Review, pp.1-9 (full article)
Levin, D.Z., and
Cross, R. (2004) The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating
Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer, Management Science 50,
pp. 1477-1490.
Hey Nik - I'm thankful that you're in my final assignment group. It's hard for me to classify if I am a weak or strong tie, but I read your post and had to go back to the reading to share this:
ReplyDelete"Granovetter, in his study of how people find jobs, theorized that weak ties-those typified as distant and by infrequent interaction-were more likely to be sources of novel information, because strong ties tend to be connected to others who are close to a knowledge seeker and so trafficking in information the seeker already knows. Subsequent research on the importance of weak ties has demonstrated that they can be instrumental, not only to finding a job, but also to the diffusion of ideas" (Levin, D.Z. and Cross, R., p. 1478).
So I guess maybe you can determine what kind of tie you are and see if this theory holds true?
Nik, I have a slightly different interpretation of weak ties. You say that a weak tie is a friend of a friend. Instead, I like what the leading network researcher Valdis Krebs says about weak ties:
ReplyDelete"It’'s not just a casual acquaintance. A weak tie used to be a strong tie; there was trust and shared knowledge. If I go to a conference today and meet somebody new, people will say “that'’s a weak tie.” I say no, it’s an acquaintance tie. But if I also run into Peter from Disney, who I used to work with, that’s a weak tie that can be reactivated. A lot of Granovetter’s research on weak ties was based on people who had known each other better before."
Does this quote change your view of your personal network?
Dr. Pade that is an interesting quote. Perhaps it does, and I probably need to let it stew for a while before I make a determination (I will still give a first blush opinion though, it's my nature). I blame Facebook for possibly tainting my 'weak tie' definition. ;) But then again it seems very subjective and people will probably go back and forth about it for ages to come. Honestly I do think that Adam would meet even Krebs' definition of a weak tie. I have known him for a couple years now, now a substantial amount about him that can't be found on fBook and could easily nurture it into a strong tie.
ReplyDeleteThis raises a good point: whether a tie is strong or weak doesn't always say a lot about that tie's utility. I hate to think of my friends (strong ties) in terms of their usefulness, but I find that these relationships tend to exist on such a higher plane emotionally that often they don't see opportunities for engagement, as in the situation Nik references here. Your strong ties may see you in such an unalterable light that they miss out on what someone with a weaker connection might pick up on. I remember a decade ago, when I was jobless, struggling and mowing lawns to get by, the strong ties saw the starving artist, while the weak ties saw someone who might could use a sandwich, and opened the fridge.
ReplyDeleteNik thanks for sharing. I believe your weak ties in this situation are your best ties. Just because Brad has not been able to assist in this instance doesn't change his status as being a strong tie. He may not be comfortable with networking people personally and/or professionally but he may be able to assist you in other ways that he may be more comfortable with like writing a personal letter of recommendation since he does know you well. I believe when we look at strong and weak ties we also need to go a step further and look at what their strengths and weaknesses are in the connection.
ReplyDeleteSo just an update, another weak tie scored me an interview. This time with Adobe. Cheers to weak ties.
ReplyDelete