Six degrees and LinkedIn.

With restrictions on getting together & needing to keep socially distanced, it might seem strange to say that we’re actually a lot closer to everyone than you may think, but that’s the idea behind “Six Degrees of Separation”. The theory was first set out in 1929 and suggests that you can make a link from between any two people in only 6 steps - you know someone that knows someone etc.

Once dismissed as the academic version of an urban myth, the birth of the internet & popularisation of email & messaging apps gave rise to some new research, in particular two studies, one via email & the other via Microsoft Messenger ( as it was called way back when!), that showed that the average number of steps (though not the maximum) was indeed 6.

So what?  If you’re looking for work then working your contact list is probably more important now than ever, but  the trick is to look beyond the people you immediately know, be confident to ask to speak to that friend of a friend and grow the chain from there. In business people have talked for a long time about building a network & LinkedIn’s model is based on supporting that so in a future piece we’ll give some tips on how best to use the site.