A recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled “How to Hunt for Jobs as Time Out of Work Drags On and On” touches on the importance of expanding social networks to find new jobs. According to the author, one way to expand your social network is to participate in volunteer work. This idea is relevant to our coursework, particularly in its relationship to sociologist Mark Granovetter’s research on how people use social networks to find jobs.

Most striking about Granovetter’s findings is that people find jobs more frequently through “acquaintances” than “friends”. This is because your friends are likely to be in the same social circle as you and thus are likely to have access to the same information. An acquaintance (someone whom you are connected to via a local bridge), on the other hand, is part of a different network and might have information about job openings that neither you nor your friends do.

Following this logic, volunteer work makes sense as a medium for meeting acquaintances, for it attracts participants with diverse backgrounds. Additionally, community service puts you in non-threatening environments where you can show how compassionate, helpful, and self-motivated you are. These are the very characteristics that interviewers look for, but are often difficult to express during an interview. Your new acquaintances, however, will have a first-hand account of your capabilities, and this gives them the ability to vouch for your performance in a social (but not explicitly socially-motivated) setting. So, although you may not become best friends with someone you volunteer with, the weekly or monthly contact you have can suffice to create a local bridge necessary to find a new job. By helping others, you can in fact help yourself.