When Does Social Capital Matter? Non-Searching For Jobs Across the Life Course

Non-searchers — people who get their jobs without engaging in a job search — are often excluded from investigations of the role of personal relationships in job finding processes. This practice fails to capture the scope of informal job matching activity and underestimates the effectiveness of socia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social forces 2006-09, Vol.85 (1), p.521-549
Main Authors: McDonald, Steve, Elder, Glen H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Careers
Comparative Analysis
Cultural Capital
Cultural values
Effectiveness
Employment
Employment Opportunities
Gender Differences
Gender inequality
Gender studies
Human Capital
Inequality
Interpersonal Relationship
Job Applicants
Job hunting
Job Search
Job Search Methods
Labor Market
Labor markets
Life Cycle
Men
Occupations
Personal relationships
Quality of life
Regression (Statistics)
Sampson, Robert J
Scope of employment
Sexual Inequality
Social Capital
Social capital (Sociology)
Social networking
Social Networks
Social theories
Social theory
Social values
Sociology
Sociology of work
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Wages
Work Experience
Working population. Employment. Women's work
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Description
Summary:Non-searchers — people who get their jobs without engaging in a job search — are often excluded from investigations of the role of personal relationships in job finding processes. This practice fails to capture the scope of informal job matching activity and underestimates the effectiveness of social capital. Moreover, studies typically obtain average estimates of social capital effectiveness across broad age ranges, obscuring variation across the life course. Analysis of early career and mid-career job matching shows that non-searching is associated with significant advantages over formal job searching. However, these benefits accrue only during mid-career and primarily among highly experienced male non-searchers. The results highlight the need to examine life course variations in social capital effectiveness and the role of non-searching as an important informal mechanism in the maintenance of gender inequality.
ISSN:0037-7732
1534-7605
DOI:10.1353/sof.2006.0133