When Is It OK to Use Connections to Land a Job?‌‌

Everyone knows relationships can go a long way in a job search: a family member or a former colleague puts in a call, and your CV makes it to the top of the pile. We would also like to think that the labor market is meritocratic—that ultimately the most qualified person gets the position. Can we believe both at the same time?‌

“There are two different logics that we bring into our job search—the social capital logic and the meritocracy logic—and they appear to conflict,” explains Yale SOM’s Laura Adler. “One tells us to use our ties and the other tells us that using those ties would constitute an unearned advantage or nepotism, so we have an icky feeling about it.”‌

Understanding how people navigate the tension between a commitment to a meritocratic labor market and an acknowledgement that connections matter, Adler says, is key to understanding when and how they leverage their own relationships in a job hunt. Importantly, insights into this process can also help us understand how using connections plays out differently for people with varying amounts of human and social capital.‌

New research by Adler and Elena Ayala-Hurtado of Princeton University proposes that people use “situational alignment,” or alignment between the job-seeker, the job itself, and the type of help they call in, to rationalize using connections and reconcile these competing logics under certain circumstances. ‌

For example, if someone uses a connection to get an interview for a job for which they already have the right degree and work experience, and they also ace the interview, using that connection is seen as legitimate. But a junior colleague relying on a connection to land a senior role without having the right qualifications lacks that alignment.‌

Adler and Ayala-Hurtado began their study by conducting qualitative interviews with 56 young Spaniards of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, ranging from working class to upper class. All of them were college-educated and all lived in Madrid, the nation’s capital and its largest city. Spain’s high youth unemployment rate (25% among those under 25 in 2018, when they conducted their interviews) raises the stakes of using connections, while also heightening the sense of unfairness when someone qualified gets passed over in favor of someone with an in.‌

Culturally, it is not unusual in Spain to rely on one’s friends or family for favors and aid. There’s even a slang term in Spanish, enchufe, for finding a job through connections. Despite the extremely negative connotations of enchufe (the word translates literally to “electrical plug,” conjuring an image of getting plugged directly into a job based solely on connections), 51 out of the 56 people they interviewed said they had received some form of help from their social circle as they searched for work, and all but one said they were open to such help under certain circumstances. ‌

But the researchers’ interview subjects were careful to distinguish between good connections and bad enchufe. For example, one young man named Carlos described an acquaintance who, through “insistence and being a pain in the neck,” had managed to get herself hired at a school. The person who hired her decided, “Since she’s here, we’ll give [the job] to her. We’ll give it to her and that way she’ll be happy, and we’ll see how she develops,” according to Carlos. “That shocked me,” he told the researchers. ‌

In this case, explains Adler, Carlos saw the use of enchufe as illegitimate because there wasn’t appropriate alignment between the candidate, her qualifications, and the normal evaluation process. “If you’re not qualified for the job, or even if you are qualified, if you get hired without being subjected to the typical evaluation process, that would constitute a violation,” she says. “People find it hard to justify those situations.” ‌

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people found it easier to justify enchufe when it came to their own situations or the situations of people with whom they were close. The same Carlos praised a close friend of his who had been recommended for a job at a private school by her boyfriend’s parents who worked there, because she had asked the school for guidance on how to become qualified, and done everything that was asked of her, such as learning English and studying cooperative learning. “She did what was necessary…to be able to get in. In the end she got the job, but she worked for it a lot,” Carlos told the interviewers. ‌

The respondents also said that using connections was less objectionable when the jobs themselves were low-skilled, such as working at a supermarket or in a bar. There was less fear that someone more qualified would lose out to a less qualified but connected candidate when, as an interviewee named Víctor whose grocery store job was obtained through enchufe put it, “anyone can do” the job in question. Because his job at the grocery store, which he received without being subjected to any kind of selection process, required no special skills, Víctor explained, “I don’t feel bad.” ‌

Adler and Ayala-Hurtado then sought to test whether these attitudes were more widely held by testing out their findings about situational alignment on a larger and more representative sample of young Spaniards. The respondents were provided with a vignette describing a hiring situation in which an applicant applies to a job, receives help from a connection, and gets the job; then they were asked to what extent they agreed with the hiring decision. These scenarios varied according to the three variables that create or violate situational alignment: the job seeker (someone whose degree was either in human resources or tourism), the job (a human resources job at a business or a waiter in a restaurant), and the type of help received from a connection, in this case a cousin (help accessing an interview, versus help that circumvents the interview process). ‌

Once again, they found that situational alignment allowed respondents to legitimize the use of connections, with higher agreement with the hiring decision when the job-seeker’s qualifications, the role they’re seeking, and the evaluation process were all in sync. ‌

They also randomly assigned people to picture this vignette involving a close tie of theirs, or an unknown person named Javier. Again, respondents were more supportive of the hiring decision when it involved someone close to them than a distant person. ‌

These findings have important ramifications for inequality, especially when it comes to accessing scarce labor market opportunities, Adler points out. Nearly every young person the researchers interviewed, regardless of their social class, used a similar justification process to navigate the tension between a wish for meritocracy and the reality of needing to use their social capital, but to very different effects. ‌

“They all do the same process of justification, but what they’re justifying looks very different,” Adler explains. “People from higher class backgrounds have more valuable social capital, so their ties get them better stuff—better opportunities, more high-paying jobs. Coming from a higher socioeconomic status also means that you have had more opportunities to cultivate signals of merit, such as going to an elite school or a prestigious graduate program. “‌

One way to level the playing field is to provide more opportunities to access both signals of merit, by, for example, expanding access to higher education or training, and to increase access to social capital, through networking events or mentorship programs within organizations. That way, these perks are not solely the province of those who start off with privilege and connections. ‌

Otherwise, this widespread and apparently persuasive rationale can perpetuate inequality, Adler says. While the justification remains the same across lines, “it legitimizes very different outcomes for low- and high-income people.”.‌