Disability and employment: considering the importance of social capital

Journal of Rehabilitation, July-Sept, 2005 by Blyden Potts

Granovetter's (1974) key contribution concerning the job-finding process lay in recognizing the impact of scarce and trustworthy information in the labor market and showing how that information is channeled by social networks that link employers with employees. Employers prefer to have trustworthy information about prospective employees, which leads them to rely on contacts who can serve as references for prospective employees, especially for white-collar jobs (Granovetter, 1974). Job seekers prefer to find jobs through contacts for several reasons: (1) they get information about more job opportunities, (2) networks are the only viable source of information for the "hidden job market" of unannounced opportunities, (3) job contacts often have an "in" with the employer, (4) networks are more effective than other job search methods in getting a job, and (5) networks often yield a more desirable and higher-paying job (Granovetter, 1974; Hansen, 2000).

Characteristics of Effective Job Contact Networks

The characteristics that tend to make social networks more effective in finding employment are: (1) being larger. (2) having contacts who are well-connected, (3) having low redundancy, (4) having a high proportion of "weak" ties, (5) including employers ill desired places of employment, (6) having a network that will think of you when a job opportunity presents itself, and possibly (7) having prestigious contacts. The successful job seeker typically receives job information via a short chain of one or two intermediary contacts, who pass information about the job opportunity to them and who serve as references to pass trustworthy information about the potential employee to the employer (Granovetter, 1974). The more job opportunities a person has access to the more likely they are to find employment. The more chains a person can tap into the more job opportunities they are likely to be able to access. Thus persons with larger networks are usually at an advantage in finding employment.

Each additional direct contact may tap into hundreds of additional chains. The job seeker may know several dozen to a few hundred job contacts personally. In network terms these are at a distance of one step. Each of those contacts may in turn know hundreds of other contacts who might be part of the job seeker's network at a distance of two steps (i.e. indirect contacts). Thus having a network of more well-connected contacts also makes the job seeker's network more effective. A smaller network of better-connected contacts can be more effective than a large network of less well-connected contacts. A network of ten direct contacts who each know 100 people reaches 1010 people while a network of fifteen contacts who each know fifty people only reaches 765 within two chain "links" or steps.

This math assumes that there is no overlap in the people known by each contact. But if the contacts all tend to know the same people, then the number of people reached by network may be much smaller. Some contacts might not provide links to any new people, if the only people they connect with are already in the network via links with other contacts. In social network terms, the extent to which people in the network repeat or overlap is known as redundancy. If a network of ten contacts each know 100 people but they are the other nine contacts and the same 91 other people in each case then the total network is only 100 people, a traction of the 1010 people who would be in the network if there were no redundancy. Having a bit of redundancy can be a good thing. If one connection to a job opportunity fails to relay the message, a second chain may succeed. So a bit of redundancy indicates a network with some backup connections, but baying a lot of redundancy makes a network less effective.