Motivation vs. Relevance: Using Strong Ties to Find a Job in Urban China

While the idea that contacts matter in finding a job is intuitively appealing, we still do not know-after decades of research-how and why strong ties benefit job seekers. To resolve this confusion, we need to theorize how specific characteristics of ties are related to the mechanisms that make job search through contacts effective. We have reasons to expect that, while a contact's motivation influences the likelihood that a job seeker receives an offer, her homophily with the job seeker on occupation and other job-relevant attributes influences the quality of the offer. The use of strong ties among university students to find jobs in China provides a unique opportunity to empirically isolate the relationship between contact characteristics and the mechanisms through which contacts benefit the job seeker. I tested my hypotheses with data on both the successful and unsuccessful job searches of 478 graduates of China's flagship universities, who, as first-time job seekers, primarily used strong ties. Survey results are consistent with my hypotheses: job seekers who used strong ties to look for jobs had more offers-but not better offers-than those who used only formal methods.

[1]  N. Lin,et al.  Social Resources and Strength of Ties: Structural Factors in Occupational Status Attainment , 1981, Social Capital, Social Support and Stratification.

[2]  James D. Montgomery,et al.  Job Search and Network Composition: Implications of the Strength-Of-Weak-Ties Hypothesis , 1992 .

[3]  S. McDonald,et al.  When Does Social Capital Matter? Non-Searching For Jobs Across the Life Course , 2006 .

[4]  Beate Völker,et al.  Getting Ahead in the GDR , 1999 .

[5]  Nan Lin,et al.  SOCIAL NETWORKS AND STATUS ATTAINMENT , 1999 .

[6]  G. Green,et al.  Racial and ethnic differences in job-search strategies in Atlanta, Boston, and Los Angeles , 1999 .

[7]  P. V. Marsden,et al.  Core Discussion Networks of Americans , 1987 .

[8]  Ted Mouw Social Capital and Finding a Job: Do Contacts Matter? , 2003, American Sociological Review.

[9]  Donald J. Treiman,et al.  The household registration system and social stratification in China: 1955–1996 , 2002, Demography.

[10]  Mark S. Granovetter T H E S T R E N G T H O F WEAK TIES: A NETWORK THEORY REVISITED , 1983 .

[11]  Y. Bian Bringing strong ties back in: Indirect ties, network bridges, and job searches in China , 1997 .

[12]  Stephen O. Murray,et al.  Strong Ties and Job Information , 1981 .

[13]  V. Yakubovich Weak Ties, Information, and Influence: How Workers Find Jobs in a Local Russian Labor Market , 2005 .

[14]  Ted Mouw,et al.  Racial differences in the effects of job contacts: Conflicting evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal data , 2002 .

[15]  M. Kalmijn,et al.  Intermarriage and homogamy: causes, patterns, trends. , 1998, Annual review of sociology.

[16]  Gergely Horváth Occupational Mismatch and Social Networks , 2013 .

[17]  Martin King Whyte,et al.  Urban life in contemporary China , 1984 .

[18]  Ted Mouw,et al.  Estimating the Causal Effect of Social Capital: A Review of Recent Research , 2006 .

[19]  N. Weinberg,et al.  Sifting and sorting : Personal contacts and hiring in a retail bank , 1997 .

[20]  Nan Lin,et al.  Getting Ahead in Urban China , 1991, American Journal of Sociology.

[21]  F. Cingano,et al.  People I Know: Job Search and Social Networks , 2008, Journal of Labor Economics.

[22]  Peter V. Marsden,et al.  Social Resources and Mobility Outcomes: A Replication and Extension , 1988 .

[23]  S. Smith,et al.  “Don’t put my name on it”: Social Capital Activation and Job‐Finding Assistance among the Black Urban Poor1 , 2005, American Journal of Sociology.

[24]  M. Sobel,et al.  Identification Problems in the Social Sciences , 1996 .

[25]  T. Korpi Good Friends in Bad Times? Social Networks and Job Search among the Unemployed in Sweden , 2001 .

[26]  Steve McDonald,et al.  What You Know or Who You Know? Occupation-specific work experience and job matching through social networks , 2011 .

[27]  P. V. Marsden,et al.  Social Networks, Job Changes, and Recruitment , 2001 .

[28]  Yanjie Bian,et al.  Guanxi and the Allocation of Urban Jobs in China , 1994, The China Quarterly.

[29]  Mark S. Granovetter Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers , 1974 .

[30]  M. McPherson,et al.  Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks , 2001 .