We know that social networks are critical to professional advancement. We also know that men are more likely to rise to leadership positions.
This makes one wonder: Is there a difference between the networks of successful male and female leaders?
Recent research I conducted with collaborators Yang Yang and Nitesh V. Chawla suggests there is. We studied what types of networks helped new male and female MBAs land executive leadership positions. We found that men benefit not so much from size of network but from being central in the MBA student network—or connected to multiple “hubs”, or people who have a lot of contacts across different groups of students.
Women benefited in terms of post-MBA job placement from being central in the network too; but to achieve the executive positions with the highest levels of authority and pay they also had to have an inner circle of close female contacts, despite having similar qualifications to men including education and work experience.
Why the difference?
Being central gives male or female students quick access to varied job market information—such as who’s hiring, what salaries are offered at different firms, how long it takes to get promoted, how to optimize their resumes—that is public but tends to be scattered widely among students in the class. Being central puts dispersed information in ready reach.
However, because women seeking positions of executive leadership often face cultural and political hurdles that men typically do not, they benefit from an inner circle of close female contacts that can share private information about things like an organization’s attitudes toward female leaders, which helps strengthen women’s job search, interviewing, and negotiation strategies. While men had inner circles in their networks too – contacts that they communicated with most – we found that the gender composition of males’ inner circles was not related to job placement.
The Power of Direct Placement
Winning placement into executive leadership positions directly out of graduate school benefits men and women alike. Early-career women, especially, can use this route to sidestep longstanding labor-market challenges, including stereotyping and discrimination, which result in lower pay, lesser advancement opportunities, and a higher rate of dropping out of the labor market altogether.
But little is known about the links between graduate school and placement into these positions. We wanted to understand whether one’s network enables MBAs to find the right opportunities, setting the stage for successful careers.
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