Kid graduated kindergarten? Adorable. Your pet hangs out with you for conference calls? That photo is so much more interesting than the call! You had a fracture? I can sympathize. Ran a half marathon? Join the club!
Is this relevant to your corporate career? Quite possibly.
Facebook Flashback: Many Weak Ties, Strong Job Hunting
Facebook launched in 2006. I joined in 2007 and there were already quite a few friends – classmates I hadn’t met in 10 years, former colleagues, and cousins there. I posted about my holidays, family, books I read – very normal day to day stuff – and so did they. It was a way to nurture “weak ties” – a sort of digital hello to people you crossed in the virtual corridor of life.
And during times of crisis, you appealed to the many weak ties and often one came through for you based on your social credibility. Facebook research from 2016 says, and I quote “Most people find a job through one of their numerous weaker ties. An individual stronger tie is more likely to help than a individual weaker tie.How is this possible? Well, weak ties are important collectively because of their quantity, but strong ties are important individually because of their quality.”
Anyway, that social networking version of Facebook died – you can read more about why here.
LinkedIn – And the Need for Strong Weak Ties
I did my engineering summer internship at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) lead facility for rocket and satellite launch vehicle development. Yes, it is as cool as it sounds. I got it with no help from my college – it was entirely through the power of a strong mother with many weak ties. She wrote letters and asked for help for her daughter to get a good internship, her friends asked their friends, and someone knew someone who worked at ISRO, they wrote a letter, and voilà I had an internship!
The weak ties are the distribution channel for information, and the more of these ties you have, the more awareness there is, and the higher the probability that a real opportunity will be surfaced. Once the opportunity is identified, you find a stronger tie to get you in through the door.
But the weak ties are essential for discovery.
Pre-internet people nourished their connections through letters, birthday cards, gifts and the occasional visits. And then there was Facebook. And then there wasn’t Facebook. What would fill this vacuum?
The answer is…..drum roll, LinkedIn!
What does this mean for you on LinkedIn?
For one, it should give you greater clarity of what is the expectation from you. It is that you nurture weak ties, and maintain strong ties to prevent them from withering.
Second, that if you want to nourish your ties, you will soon run out of professional updates that interest them and will have to start sharing human aspects that a larger audience can relate to.
Third, posts celebrating personal milestones are an “ask” for the ties to be strengthened – do not skip past them with a mere like, stop to write a comment and celebrate the occasion with them.
Yes, I know I’ve also been guilty of cringing or wondering “How much did she pay for that car/PhD/graduation/holiday/
Funerals and Weddings were designed to be public across cultures by design – sharing our grief and joy with other humans is healing, and reconnects us.
So what should I do?
Stop scrolling and start nourishing 🙂 Likes are not memorable, comments are. Interact with newsletters – write back to me as a start! I love hearing from you.
Have a great week!
