Introduction and Appendix A

1. In what field is Granovetter’s Ph.D.?
2. What’s Granovetter’s research question for his Boston study (his dissertation)?
3. Describe his research method: what was his source of data, how did he identify and contact his sources, and how did he analyze his data?
4. What’s "PTM"?
5. What does Granovetter mean by "formal," "personal," and "direct application"?
6. What are the characteristics of people who tend to find jobs by directly applying for an open position?
7. What are other ways of finding a job?

1. How would a "perfect" labor market (the labor market of first-year microeconomics) operate?
2. Why don’t real labor markets operate this way?
3. If an economist decides to recognize the process of job search, (s)he’ll typically set up an equilibrium model in which the value of the time spent searching equals the expected value of finding a better job than one has or than one can find with less searching. Why is this irrelevant in the case of PTM jobs?
4. What are alternatives to "searching" for a job?
5. What the characteristics of people who tend to find jobs by searching?
6. What are the alternatives to looking for someone to fill a job?

1. From pages 53-4, what are "the strengths of weak ties" (which is essentially the title of a famous article by Granovetter)?
2. What are the characteristics of people who tend to find jobs by making use of family or social contacts? Of people who make use of work contacts?
3. What is the geography of job links made through family or social contacts? Work contacts? Strong ties? Weak ties?

1. How are job-relevant contacts acquired? Family/social contacts, versus work contacts?
2. What influences the geography of contacts?
3. How are contacts maintained? Family/social contacts, versus work contacts?

1. What relationship did Granovetter find between (a) length of job tenure and (b) use of work contacts to find new jobs? How did he explain this relationship?

• What do these chapters suggest to you about the ways you might conduct your job search, now and over the course of your career?
• Does this book suggest any research questions for you, beyond the questions that Granovetter posed in the research he reports?
• Have you any idea why Granovetter’s work (especially "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness" (Appendix D) and "The Strength of Weak Ties") has been very widely cited by human geographers?