Sharing with Friends: Job Information and Social Networks

Author(s):  
Gaurav Chiplunkar
Author(s):  
Sandra Susan Smith

This article examines whether social ties play a significant role in job seeking by poor people. A number of studies provide evidence that in relative and absolute terms, the poor rely heavily on social networks for job-finding. Without networks, poor job seekers are significantly less likely to find work. After considering what kinds of ties help the poor get ahead, this article discusses the role of weak ties as a source of job information and influence. It then explores the link between employment outcomes and network structure and composition as well as how people make leveraging ties, and how might this process of tie formation inform our understanding of network inequality. It also asks why leveraging ties are effective and concludes with an assessment of conditions that facilitate social capital activation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Zhang

AbstractWe develop a model in which unemployed workers can pass along unwanted job information to other unemployed friends within social networks. Compared with the case in the absence of social networks, we first show in an economy where networks are equal in size that unemployment rate is lower. In terms of social welfare, social planner prefers workers becoming more selective than the decentralized equilibrium. When social networks differ in size, increasing the size difference is beneficial for unemployed workers with large networks but detrimental to those with small networks; in addition, the unemployment rate decreases with the size difference. However, because of the dilution effect, as the proportion of unemployed workers with large networks increases, it eventually results in losses for all unemployed workers, and the unemployment rate may follow a non-monotonic pattern.


2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 1223-1243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Niles ◽  
Susan Hanson

For those who have online access, the Internet significantly reduces the cost and time of transferring information over distance. This paper explores the potential of the Internet to improve people's employment opportunities by increasing their access to job information beyond that provided via their grounded social networks. Information circulating through grounded social networks is biased socially and geographically toward the life experiences of network members. The tendency for those members to have similar life experiences dampens the variability in the information exchanged in such networks. What is the potential for the Internet to expand people's access to information about jobs and employers' information about workers? We report on a pilot study undertaken in Worcester, Massachusetts, that examined employers' use of Internet recruiting for employees. The results of this qualitative study indicate that these employers use the Internet strategically to enhance the volume of applications when the labor market is tight and to segment the applicant pool when the market loosens and the number of resumes is overwhelming. As a result, we conclude that many grounded social relations that have been integral to the hiring process are resilient to the Internet; pre-Internet geographies shape Internet geographies, and grounded social relations continue to define access to information about job opportunities even online.


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