Just How Strong Are Weak Ties?

It is a commonly held belief that weak ties are more effective in helping you land a new job than strong ties. Our intuition might tell us that strong ties are more valuable because a close connection knows you better and naturally is more invested in your personal and professional success. But as Granovetter noted in his 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties, most people have significantly more weak ties than strong ones, and these weak ties may in turn allow them to tap into a much broader professional network. This leads to another question: does this conclusion about the strength of weak ties apply equally to everyone?

As researchers from Tufts University have discovered, both weak and strong ties play valuable roles in the job search process for people around the world, but the “value of a single strong tie is even more important for job seekers in countries with pronounced income equality.” For example, having just a single strong tie is more valuable in South Africa or Haiti as opposed to one formed in Sweden or the Netherlands, where there is greater socio-economic equality. Thus, job seekers should take their geographic location (or more specifically, the socio-economic balance of their location) into consideration when analyzing the strength of their professional networks.

 

Figure: People rely more heavily on strong ties in countries with greater economic disparity.

This research was novel regarding its use of a single data set (i.e., anonymous Facebook data from users’ social networks in 55 countries) in order to compare the strength of ties across international borders. Another surprising conclusion from the study was that more than 90% of Facebook friendships are considered weak ties, which is something to think about the next time you receive a friend request from someone you just met. For those readers who are surprised or even disillusioned by this looming 90%, consider how the presence of weak ties may actually add to your network by giving more value to those few strong ties you actually hold dear.