Interpersonal Tie Strength Theory

The theory of tie strength is the basis of how LinkedIn works. The following definition should be able to satisfy a multitude of intuitive opinions of an interpersonal tie’s “strength”: a tie’s strength combines the total time, the familiarity, the emotional intensity, and the mutual beneficial services that the tie is characterized by. Although the set is apparently highly intra-correlated, each of them is independent of the other in some way.

As the empirical research indicated, either weak or strong ties are regarded as useful if people are seeking jobs. The ties that are weakly connected offer access to jobs and other subjects related novel information. People are more likely to obtain strong ties with those people who are alike to each

According to a study of a Boston suburb conducted by Granovetter’s (1974), it is more frequently for the U.S professional workers to acquire job information by weak ties over strong ties. Yet, for those Japanese technical and professional workers, the way they obtain job information is totally opposite to what has been found in the U.S, and this was examined by Watanabe (1987).

As Bian (1997) indicates, in both U.S. and China, the social networks are mobilized by job hunters for the purpose of securing employment. This means that in order to secure jobs, people with significantly diversity cultures in fact count on the assistance of interpersonal relationships.

As 41 implied, to be successful in countries with different cultures backgrounds, such as U.S and China, social networks operate in various ways. It is not an easy task to use a general structure across cultures, since the social networks may not be able to have homogeneous structure in different cultures. For instance, Bian (1997) and Watanabe (1987) believed that in Asian cultures tend to use strong ties more whereas the opininon that American cultures prefer weak ties more is suggested by Granovetter

The ability of targeting passive job hunters and reaching a various population is particular concerned by they. A few respondents were worried about job boards’ impersonal nature, and besides, they had a feeling that in online recruitment, the strong relationship with people at agency was absent.

In order to develop and keep a network of professional relations with people who are more likely to help them with their job or career, employers might be interested in joining job search activities (Wanberg et al., 2000). Since careers are seen as more boundaryless, lately, the essential of development of networks, which can be seen as career management strategy, has an incredible increase (Forret & Dougherty, 2001).

As Boswell et al. (2002) indicated, network objective guided individuals prefer to meet and talk to people who are essential to their job or career, specifically, headhunters or in their professions, rather than collecting job information by themselves. Hence, they tend to take advantages of job-hunting methods, which human contact is involved, including networking, and contacting employers and employment agencies. Conversely, the fact that objective of developing a professional network was related to preparatory more strongly over activating job-hunting behavior is found by Boswell et al.