Are weak ties less important for job-seeking?

…I argue that new technologies have changed the kinds of problems people face when searching for a job.  The problem is no longer, as it was in the 1970s, discovering that the job opening exists in the first place.  Instead, job seekers’ major problem is ensuring that someone notices their resume now that so many people are applying to every job opening.  When you want your resume to be noticed, it turns out that workplace ties — people who can speak to what you are like as a worker — help white-collar job seekers much more than weak ties do (61 percent of my sample were helped by workplace ties, and 17 percent were helped by weak ties).  This is not to say that Granovetter’s study is wrong, but rather that is is a grounded snapshot of a historical moment.

That is from the quite good and surprisingly substantive Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today, by Ilana Gershon.