Stop Calling the 5 Closest Contacts for Leads
MIT, Stanford, and Harvard tracked 20 million people to find which contacts actually deliver the next executive role.
Inside this issue:
→ The copy-paste Claude prompt that turns a 2,000-row LinkedIn export into a call list sorted by C-level, VP, and senior HR
→ What MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and LinkedIn learned from tracking 20 million people and 600,000 new jobs
→ The exact number of mutual connections that makes a contact valuable, and why more makes it worse
Most executives network at the two extremes.
They call their 5 closest contacts. Or they fire off cold messages to strangers at target companies.
The largest networking experiment ever conducted proves both are the wrong targets. The people most likely to surface your next role sit in the forgotten middle of your network.
Today I’m sharing an AI prompt I’m super excited about: it finds those people in your network for you.
The 20-Million-Person Study Most Executives Ignore
In September 2022, researchers from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard teamed up with LinkedIn to publish the largest causal networking study ever run. It appeared in Science.
The setup: for 5 years, LinkedIn adjusted its “People You May Know” algorithm for over 20 million users. Some users got more suggestions for strong ties. Others got more weak ties. The researchers then tracked 2 billion new connections, 70 million job applications, and 600,000 new jobs.
The result: moderately weak ties beat everything else.
Not your inner circle. Not strangers. The middle of your network.
The researchers measured tie strength by mutual connections. The sweet spot for landing a new role sits around 10 shared connections. Past that point, every additional mutual connection makes a contact less useful for your search.
Why Your Inner Circle Keeps Coming Up Empty
Most executives believe their strongest relationships are their most valuable search asset.
Wrong.
Strong ties are people you interact with regularly and share dozens of mutual connections with. That’s exactly the problem. Their network is your network. A job opportunity circulating in their world is already circulating in yours. Asking them for leads is asking someone who reads the same newspaper to tell you the news.
At the other extreme sits cold outreach. Zero shared connections, zero trust, zero reason to respond. In my practice, cold messages from executive candidates get a 5 to 10 percent response rate.
Weak ties solve both problems at once. The colleague who moved to a competitor 3 years ago. The VP you worked with on one cross-functional project in 2022. The conference contact you exchanged 4 emails with and then forgot. They know you well enough to vouch for you. And they move in circles you have no window into.
Warm introductions through contacts like these convert at 40 to 65 percent.
The fix: stop asking the 5 people who know you best. Start contacting the 50 who know you just well enough.
Networking Is Step 3, Not Step 1
Most executives hear “networking gets you hired” and make it their first move.
Wrong. It’s the third step.
An executive job search runs in a fixed sequence:
Optimize your LinkedIn profile so you show up in recruiter searches. Every introduction a weak tie makes for you ends with someone opening your profile. If it undersells you, the introduction dies there.
Reach out to a targeted group of headhunters. 80%+ of executive roles are filled through direct headhunter contact, not postings. Your weak ties cover the rest.
Activate your weak ties. That’s today’s edition.
Skip ahead to step 3 and you burn your best introductions on a profile that isn’t ready to receive them.
From 2,000 Connections to a Targeted Call List
