Customer Reviews

Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers

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Mark Granovetter reveals how people make economic decisions and take economic actions based on the social structure they are embedded in. We are not totally rational beings as the old economists would have us believe -- we are social beings -- influenced by, and influencing those around us. It is how we vote, how we dress, how we think, what careers we pursue and what products we buy.

Yet, those immediately around us may not be very useful in helping us find a job! Our close associates know what we know at the same time we know it! Therefore, they are not very useful for telling us something new -- like where a job opening is. To find out about jobs, we don't already know about, we need to go outside of our immediate social circle to connect to people we don't see very often any more[old friends, college chums, old army buddies, former co-workers, old sorority sisters]. They now live in different social circles than we do. These social circles have information not available in our social circle -- some of the info is about job openings.

This classic book is still highly relevant and useful after 30 years! The book is somewhat `academic' in parts, but is so full of `gems' that it is worth slogging through the research numbers. Every college graduate should read this book and keep it handy till they retire.

This book is an interesting introduction to the workings of the labor market. The main theory revolves around the fact that contacts within our social circle usually do not have access to information we do not already have; in order to get new information, we need to extend social circles and reach for those with whom we do not have constant contact.

Through a very academic approach to the problem, the scientific approach is best to help us understand how people get jobs. I originally read this book as an undergraduate in a labor economics course, and I have recently consulted it again (10yrs later) and found many insights I had not caught the first time around.

This is the study where the famous "Strength of Weak Ties" paper came from -- IMHO, the best named social science paper ever! Worth the price just to understand the importance, and use, of "weak ties" in our social networks.

This book is a mix of academic and practical. I have recommended it to several clients and friends who don't mind the academic prose to find pearls of wisdom here. Very useful for people trying to understand how the knowledge-worker job-finding process works. Good for HR folks and those who have been RIFfed. A great supplemental book for an HR class in Talent Mgt.