Is there a difference between the networks of successful male and female leaders? New research suggests there is. A study found that different types of networks helped new male and female MBAs land executive leadership positions. Researchers 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”, 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.

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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.

More on our methodology We inferred each student’s social network using an algorithm that estimates whether the statistical pattern of email exchanges between two people indicates that they are part of the same social network. For example, two students who communicate by email are estimated to be part of the same network only if their email exchanges are significantly different than expected by chance. We estimated the average size of students’ networks to be approximately 12-18 students, which is consistent with paper and pencil self-report network surveys. We gauged how central a given student was in the school-wide network using a measured called “pagerank centrality”. Pagerank centraility is interesting because it is not about having a big “Rolodex” of contracts, but rather measures the number of contacts of your contacts. For example, a student who has a small network can have high pagerank centrality if his or her contacts have many contacts of their own. Also for each student, we computed the number of same-sex contacts in their network that was greater than expected given the size of their network and the proportion of women and men students in the class. The inner circle in a student’s network was defined as the top 2-4 contacts who sent and received statistically more email communications than the other contacts in the same network. One benefit of studying graduate students is that, as a cohort, men and women are similar on measures of success: test scores, undergraduate-school quality, work experience, and others. So groups of men and women in this sample should be similar in talent and training for research-based comparisons.

To connect features of social networks at school to job placement success, we analyzed 4.5 million anonymized email correspondences among a subset of all 728 MBA graduates (74.5% men, 25.5% women) in the classes of 2006 and 2007 at a top U.S. business school. We measured job placement success by the level of authority and pay each graduate achieved after school.

Men Need Centrality

We found that the social networks of men and women MBA students affected their post-graduation job placement.

Men who had the most centrality (top quartile) in the MBA student network tended to perform best in the job market, securing jobs with more authority and pay (1.5 times greater) than their peers with the least centrality (bottom quartile). High centrality drove their placement even after controlling for individual characteristics, such as undergraduate GPA, test scores, sociability, country of origin, and work experience.

Why? Centrality is positively correlated with accessing job market information. Even though much of this is publicly available online, it can be much faster to get the information you need from different MBA students who have contacts across various groups of students who are familiar with employers you’re interested in.

Women Need Dual Networks

Our results suggest that successful women have high centrality like successful men, but they differ in that they also maintained a close inner circle of female contacts. Although we could not review the content of email messages, we believe that this close inner circle of women likely provides critical private information on job opportunities and challenges.

This private information might be about whether a firm has equal advancement opportunities for men and women, or whether an interviewer might ask about plans to start a family and the best way to respond.

Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination. While women who had networks that most resembled those of successful men (i.e., centrality but no female inner circle) placed into leadership positions that were among the lowest in authority and pay.

Women’s success also depended on a certain kind of inner circle. The best inner circles for women were those in which the women were closely connected to each other but had minimal contacts in common. For example, if Jane is a second-year MBA student whose inner circle includes classmates Mary, Cindy, and Reshma, but these three women each have networks with few overlapping contacts, then Jane will benefit not only from her three inner-circle-mates but also their non-overlapping contacts.

Interestingly, we found that the gender composition of men’s networks didn’t matter for job placement. This pattern most likely occurs because men don’t need the kind of gender-related private information that women need to navigate male-dominated professions. Despite persistent perceptions of the Old Boys’ Club in work settings, we found no evidence for it in our study of graduate school networks.

Network Smarter, Not Harder

Our findings suggest that women can benefit from taking a strategic approach to networking.

First seek quality over quantity in your overall network. Remember: centrality, in this context, is less a function of how many people you know but who those people are. Identifying and connecting with people who are connected to multiple networks is a key strategy.

Related to that point is the idea of embracing randomness. The more you associate with similar-minded or experienced people, the less likely you will be to diversify your network and inner circle. Because we tend to target actively when we network, we are prone to restrict targeting to people most like ourselves.

How do you break the pattern? Try random selection. We found that the random sorting of business-school students into sections, for example, raised the odds that female students will befriend those with experience and goals beyond their own, again expanding their knowledge and contacts in career-enhancing ways. Randomness democratizes the networking process, ultimately enhancing it.

Finally, beware a closed inner circle. When your inner circle is too interconnected—the people within it are similar and have similar contacts—it can feel socially secure but fail to generate key insights and opportunities. Workplace or industry affinity groups, for example, become closed structures in many cases. There’s nothing wrong with being part of such group, but try to complement it with others representing more diverse experience and connections.

Employers, too, can aim to create more diverse small groups, to promote the development of women. Rather than creating just an affinity group of female coders, for example, populate a separate group with members from a cross-section of the organization that increase the chances of making unexpected connections, to better inform and support individuals.

Our study suggests that women face a greater challenge in networking to find professional opportunities – they, more than men, need to maintain both wide networks and informative inner circles in order to land the best positions. The good news is that by taking a smart approach, women can continue to find meaningful advancement options, while helping their peers and more junior contacts do the same.