This is very helpful! I've found that school drop-offs, pick-ups, and playground time when around other parents is a good opportunity to share that I'm job hunting. The conversations have led to at least a few referrals, which hopefully will help my job application.
Oh, great point! I have teens who make their own way to school, but when they were younger, kid's parties were awesome for networking. I created a card game from my experiences - KinderPerfect
I *just* stumbled across this article from October 2022 from the Evening Standard in the UK that confirms exactly this, citing a study by Sinan Aral around that time but also lots and lots of other prominent researchers and research institutions besides. Though the premise of this piece does give me pause re: being too dependent on a single source for developing and maintaining weak ties. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/linkedin-social-experiment-jobs-b1030156.html
This is a fascinating finding, though, yes, one needs to think of *all* avenues of weak tie connections vs. just LinkedIn:
People who had received more recommendations to connect with “weak” contacts were twice as likely to score jobs at those contacts’ companies, compared to those that connected more with “strong” contacts.
In fact, researchers from LinkedIn, M.I.T, Stanford, and Harvard Business School agreed that “the weakest ties had the greatest impact on job mobility, whereas the strongest ties had the least”, based on their findings from analysing the data.
This is very helpful! I've found that school drop-offs, pick-ups, and playground time when around other parents is a good opportunity to share that I'm job hunting. The conversations have led to at least a few referrals, which hopefully will help my job application.
Oh, great point! I have teens who make their own way to school, but when they were younger, kid's parties were awesome for networking. I created a card game from my experiences - KinderPerfect
Very very true!
I *just* stumbled across this article from October 2022 from the Evening Standard in the UK that confirms exactly this, citing a study by Sinan Aral around that time but also lots and lots of other prominent researchers and research institutions besides. Though the premise of this piece does give me pause re: being too dependent on a single source for developing and maintaining weak ties. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/linkedin-social-experiment-jobs-b1030156.html
This is a fascinating finding, though, yes, one needs to think of *all* avenues of weak tie connections vs. just LinkedIn:
People who had received more recommendations to connect with “weak” contacts were twice as likely to score jobs at those contacts’ companies, compared to those that connected more with “strong” contacts.
In fact, researchers from LinkedIn, M.I.T, Stanford, and Harvard Business School agreed that “the weakest ties had the greatest impact on job mobility, whereas the strongest ties had the least”, based on their findings from analysing the data.