Career advice

The strongest connections in your professional network for finding your next job aren't necessarily who you think they are.

It might seem obvious that the people who have worked closely with you and whom you know the best would be the most helpful to you in your future job searches. However, a huge new study from the networking experts at LinkedIn has found that this isn't the case.

It turns out that your weaker associations, like acquaintances, are the most influential in impacting your job mobility, while your close connections actually have the least impact.

For this study, researchers from LinkedIn, Harvard Business School, Stanford and MIT set out to gather data on how relationships affect job mobility. The team randomly varied the prevalence of weak ties in the networks of over 20 million people over a five-year period between 2015 and 2019, during which time two billion new connections and 600,000 new jobs were created. They used the platform's 'People You May Know' function to encourage the connection to strong and weak ties to test these results.

The research found that when there are stronger ties between two people, more of their friendships and professional networks tend to overlap. This means that when you are looking for a job, you are most likely to already know all the friends of a close connection. This limits the amount that their networks can expand yours.

However, when it comes to your weaker ties, acquaintances in your network, their extended friends and connections are usually unknown to you. They can connect you to new people and new opportunities you would not otherwise have access to.

The most valuable connections in your network

The research found that the most effective connections in a professional network are your 'moderately weak' ties. Employment connections most often come from acquaintances with whom you share about ten mutual connections and with whom you rarely interact.

Of course, there were some variations to this by industry. In online, high tech, or 'digital' industries, moderate ties were the most likely to hook each other up with job opportunities. In more traditional, offline sectors, stronger ties were more effective for employment.

Maintain your network

This research underscores the value of expanding your network and connecting with more people in your industry. While those weaker connections might expand your access to more opportunities, this does not mean that you should neglect your close contacts. When building a successful career, it is important to have a community of people who think highly of your work ethic and abilities and can be professional references for future opportunities.

Don't be selfish. Networking is a two-way street, and you should take every opportunity you can to help recommend, refer, and promote the careers of your connections as well. Zig Ziglar famously said, "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."

The connections to purge

Of course, bigger isn't always better. It is most often assumed that you can use your professional network to find new and frequently unadvertised opportunities. The more connections you have, the more potential employment options will come your way. The LinkedIn study confirmed the usefulness of even your weaker ties for broadening your access to opportunities.

However, there are those connections that could do more harm than good. Most of us will accept – or even extend – online connection invitations (predominantly on LinkedIn) to as many of our previous coworkers as we can. Again, the thinking is that the bigger our network, the more connected we appear to be online, the more impressive we may be to potential employers.

Take a closer look at the previous coworkers, managers, and others in your online contacts. Are there any people in your network with whom you do not have the best working relationship? Are you connected to anyone that you have had – even minor – conflicts, communication lapses, or personality clashes?

It may seem that those minor incidents won't matter very much, because you won't use those particular contacts as a professional reference anyway. But your references aren't always who you think they are.

If potential employers see someone they know in your network, they may ask them what they thought of working with you – even if that individual isn't on the list of professional references you provided. Employers will Google you, check your online profiles, and ask any mutual connections for their opinion of you when making their hiring decisions.

So, if you are publicly associated with any connections with whom you would not want future employers to talk about you, you might want to discretely remove them from your network. It would be more beneficial to your career to have slightly fewer connections and a smaller network than to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for recruiters to follow to a former coworker who might – for whatever reason – give a less than stellar assessment of your work.

However, acquaintances, the people you have crossed paths with, met at industry events, or worked with casually, can be your most important connections for finding out about new job opportunities outside of those available through your inner circle.

Want to expand your professional network without committing some of the classic blunders? Check out our recent list of networking dos and don'ts.