Here’s an uncomfortable truth for anyone who skips industry events because they’re “too busy with real work”: the people getting promoted around you are probably not more talented than you. They’re better connected.
That sounds pessimistic. The research says it’s just how careers work.
The evidence has been there for fifty years
In 1974, sociologist Mark Granovetter published a study of how professionals actually found jobs. More than 55% of successful job searches came through informal contacts, not applications. His most famous finding was stranger: people were more likely to hear about opportunities from acquaintances they saw rarely than from close friends. He called it “the strength of weak ties.”
Five decades later, researchers at MIT and LinkedIn tested this on 20 million LinkedIn users, in a study published in Science. The result held. Moderately weak connections, people with roughly ten mutual contacts, were the most effective at helping users find and secure new jobs. More effective than close friends. More effective than strangers.
The logic is simple once you see it. Your close circle knows what you know and hears what you hear. Acquaintances move in different rooms. They hear about the vacancy before it’s advertised, the restructuring before it’s announced, the project that needs exactly your skill set.
Referrals punch far above their weight
The hiring data makes the same point from the employer’s side. Referrals make up roughly 2% of job applications but account for about 11% of hires, around ten times the conversion rate of a cold application.
Now think about the HR professional who belongs to no professional body and knows nobody outside their current employer. Every career move they ever make has to come through the open application pile: the most crowded, lowest-conversion channel there is. A CV among hundreds instead of a name someone vouches for.
Why this matters more in HR than almost anywhere else
HR runs on judgment calls that don’t come with a manual. How did another organisation handle a redundancy process under Ghana’s Labour Act? What’s a realistic salary band for a role you’ve never recruited before? Which HRIS vendor actually delivers after the sales pitch? None of that is in a textbook. All of it lives in the heads of other practitioners. A strong professional network is, practically speaking, a second brain – one with experience across industries you’ll never personally work in.
There’s a quieter benefit too. HR can be lonely. In many organisations you’re the only person doing what you do, holding information you can’t discuss with colleagues, making decisions some of them resent. Other HR professionals are the only people who fully understand that seat. That isn’t a soft perk. It’s how people stay sane and stay in the profession.
Networking is not what you think it is
The word puts people off because they picture business cards and forced small talk. In practice, it looks more like asking a question in a WhatsApp group of certified practitioners and getting four answers from four industries before evening. Or the person you met at a graduation two years ago calling because their company needs an HR manager. Nobody in those moments is “networking.” They’re just reachable.
None of it requires being an extrovert. It requires showing up where your profession gathers, consistently, before you need anything from anyone.
The strategic reframe
Treat your network the way you treat your certification: as career infrastructure. One proves your competence. The other decides how far that competence travels.
The HR professionals who advance fastest in Ghana over the next decade won’t only be the most qualified on paper. They’ll be the ones whose names come up in rooms they’re not in.
Make sure you’re building that.
The Association of Certified HRs – Ghana (ACHR) is the professional community for certified HR practitioners, built for exactly this kind of connection. To learn more, visit www.phrglobal.com or call 0599 444 999.
Sources: Mark Granovetter, “Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers” (1974) and “The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973); MIT Sloan / Science, “A network of weak ties drives job mobility” (2022); Wave Connect, Networking Statistics 2025 (referral application-to-hire conversion data).
