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01/23/2019

For Women Job Seekers, Networking Like a Man Isn't Enough

Women need access to key kinds of information that men don’t

To get a great job, you’ve got to network—make contacts, know the right people. You know the drill. But a study out today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the kind of networking that works best for men isn’t enough for women.

Women need access to key kinds of information that men don’t. And how can they get it? From other women.

The study looked specifically at graduates of a prestigious MBA program, using these students' emails to map out their social networks. (The program is not named in the study to protect student privacy.) For both men and women in the program, landing highly ranked leadership positions was correlated with having “high centrality” in their peer network, meaning they are connected to other well-connected peers across their social network. These kinds of contacts provide helpful information for job seekers, like who’s hiring, what salaries look like, and what a company’s reputation is. But the researchers found that high-placing women shared an additional characteristic: In addition to high centrality that would give them access to general job information, they also had a tight-knit inner circle of other well-connected women.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.

 

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