--- title: How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/ author: Jacob Clemente article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-08-10T10:30:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:07:31.923Z og:title: How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. og:url: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10ff7e00f85bbcc8/6998c8ea47fe51baa255bfa6/charter-bojinov.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: charter-bojinov og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job twitter:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10ff7e00f85bbcc8/6998c8ea47fe51baa255bfa6/charter-bojinov.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [networking](/partner-content/charter/tag/networking/) ## networking # How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job  by [Jacob Clemente](https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/) Senior Reporter, AI & Work Aug 10, 2025 10:30 AM UTC   by [Jacob Clemente](https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/) Senior Reporter, AI & Work Aug 10, 2025 10:30 AM UTC The US labor market has weakened, with hiring reduced in many sectors and job searches stretching on significantly longer for those who find themselves unemployed. In such a challenging employment market, people who have cultivated contacts outside their close circle of friends and colleagues generally have an advantage. [Research](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392) dating back to the 1970s suggests that one way to boost your chances of landing your next job is to expand your network of “weak ties”—acquaintances who are not part of your immediate social circle. A [2022 paper](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl4476) on this topic published in _Science_ used randomized experiments on the LinkedIn platform to show that moderately weak ties are, on average, more helpful for finding a new job than strong ties, which includes people like your close friends and coworkers. As the study authors put it in [Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2022/12/which-connections-really-help-you-find-a-job), moderately weak ties “strike a balance between exposing you to new social circles and information and having enough familiarity and overlapping interests so that the information is useful.” Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). For insights into how to leverage them to improve your odds in this tough job market—and at any other point throughout your career—we spoke with [Iavor Bojinov](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=1199332), one of the co-authors of the _Science_ paper and an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for length and clarity: **Who should come to mind when we think about who our weak ties are?** There's weak ties and then there's extremely weak ties. \[For\] weak ties, think of these as people who are four or five years in the same career as you, but maybe at a different company that you met at the conference. So they're not your best friends, they're not people you are texting on a regular basis. But these are people who, if you're at a conference, you might go have a conversation with them. They could be a few years behind you. They could be the same level as you. The most useful person is probably someone in your area that's a few years ahead of you. The reason why they're the most useful is because they provide you with access to information like job opportunities, new tools that people are using, etc., that isn't necessarily already available in your immediate set of friends. If you think of your co-workers, you already know the internal jobs in your organization. They're not exposing you to new job opportunities because you're seeing that already. There \[is the\] flip side, which is strong ties are your friends who you went to school with and maybe you've kept contact with. Maybe these are actually even people you might be starting companies with. So they can still provide you with a lot of economic opportunity. But when you measure it in terms of getting new jobs, it's actually the weaker ones that on average tend to provide more opportunities and more economic value than the people who are closest to you. **You found that moderately weak ties were the most helpful. Can you talk about that sweet spot?** When you think about your LinkedIn and the network that you have, there are people who \[you’re\] just connected with. \[If\] I'm connected with a pilot from Delta, that guy's not going to give me a job opportunity. I'm still connected with him, but there is no overlap. So that's why we saw this sort of inverse relationship, which is strong ties, not that helpful; super weak ties, not that helpful; sweet spot in the middle where you have some overlap in your interests and your economic activity. **The job market is cooling, and it’s particularly weak for entry-level workers. What advice would you give to job seekers right now?** From this study, the key takeaway is that people should have what we call open networks, meaning that they should be connected to many people. They should actively seek out to connect with people who are in their industry and try to interact with them. We measured the strength of ties in different ways. Are you sending messages to this person? Are you commenting on their LinkedIn? Because frankly, as the opportunities cool off, if you are an entry-level person, you need to be expanding, even geographically. You need to be not just looking in Boston, but New York, North Carolina, San Francisco, all of these around the country. If you are really looking for jobs, you need to be expanding your search. And connections is one great way of doing it because people post job openings all the time. Every time I open my LinkedIn, every fifth post, there's some sort of job that someone is trying to hire for. By having open networks where you connect with people, you interact with them, that's the easiest way to find that. A much broader trend that we are seeing right now with AI and agentic AI \[is that\] a lot of entry-level jobs can now be automated or individuals who are more senior can complete those jobs because they can use AI tools. So yes, networking will help, but it's also really important to make sure you have the right set of skills that are in demand. Do you understand how to interact with AI, how to build agents, how to deploy those so that you can market yourself as not just myself but me plus my 12 other agents that I've built? Weak ties are very, very important—open up your network so you find opportunities. But once you find opportunities, make sure you have the right set of skills so that you can actually stand out among the many applicants. **What to read:** **The** [**write-up**](https://hbr.org/2022/12/which-connections-really-help-you-find-a-job) **of the 2022 study on weak ties in Harvard Business Review for more insights on how this dynamic plays out in different industries and for remote workers.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: What In-Home Daycare Educators Know About Making Remote Work Better](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6178340/fcc-remote-work/)  ### What In-Home Daycare Educators Know About Making Remote Work Better [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6178340/fcc-remote-work/) [Open article: How to Decide if Business Travel Is Worth it Right Now](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6177304/business-travel-decision/)  ### How to Decide if Business Travel Is Worth it Right Now [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6177304/business-travel-decision/) [Open article: How to Reclaim Your Time and Make the Best Use of Networking](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6120130/beyond-collaboration-overload-rob-cross-reclaim-time/)  ### How to Reclaim Your Time and Make the Best Use of Networking [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6120130/beyond-collaboration-overload-rob-cross-reclaim-time/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/"},"headline":"How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job","datePublished":"2025-08-10T10:30:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:07:31.923Z","description":"Iavor Bojinov, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, on the research on weak ties.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10ff7e00f85bbcc8/6998c8ea47fe51baa255bfa6/charter-bojinov.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jacob Clemente","jobTitle":"Senior Reporter, AI & Work","url":"https://time.com/author/jacob-clemente/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10ff7e00f85bbcc8/6998c8ea47fe51baa255bfa6/charter-bojinov.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-bojinov","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7308636/how-to-use-weak-ties-to-get-your-next-job/","name":"How To Use ‘Weak Ties’ To Get Your Next Job"}}]}] ```