本研究利用 2014 年「台灣教育長期追蹤資料庫後續調查（TEPS-B; N=4,805）」資料，檢視社會連帶如何形塑職涯早期的勞動市場媒合，並特別檢視網絡資源、教育背景與職業連結如何調節連帶與媒合結果之間的關聯。透過次序與多項邏輯斯迴歸模型的分析顯示，弱連帶與強連帶產生了系統性截然不同的媒合路徑。弱連帶（特別是高聲望者）發揮了「指路」功能，透過專業訊號的驗證，精準引導求職者進入符合所學的職位；然而，此機制依賴求職者有實力的前提，雖確保了適配，卻也將其鎖定在既有的專業軌道內。 相反地，強連帶則發揮了「帶路」功能，利用人格背書進行訊號補償，允許求職者繞過正規門檻並跨越職業邊界。對於一般求職者而言，這是一種「以適配換取機會」的策略性權衡，雖犧牲了專業發揮，卻能獲得人情庇護，呈現「低適配、高滿意」的結果。
然而，本研究進一步發現此一權衡策略存在顯著的邊界條件。對於高學歷與高職業連結強度的專業人才而言，使用強連帶意味著必須放棄既有的專業積累。由於其原本已具備清晰的職涯路徑，透過強連帶的「帶路」反而使其中斷專業軌道，造成非自願的去專業化。這導致其落入「低適配與低滿意」的雙輸情境。此結果不僅反映了跨越專業邊界所必須經歷的「轉型代價」，即為了職涯轉換而支付的短期適應成本；亦可能體現了強連帶轉化為「負面社會資本」的人情義務與約束，迫使求職者犧牲專業發展。本研究據此提出，職涯早期的求職本質上是一場在「接受體制驗證」與「依賴人情突圍」之間的策略性博弈。
Early-career job seekers without verifiable track records face a fundamental challenge: how to demonstrate competence in labor markets where signals are noisy and hard to interpret. While social networks are often viewed as critical mechanisms for signaling, existing literature tends to treat social capital as a universally beneficial resource, overlooking the distinct costs associated with different tie strengths. This study argues that social ties offer divergent opportunity structures: weak ties facilitate passive signal verification to promote skill matching, whereas strong ties provide active, trust-based endorsements that help candidates cross formal thresholds, often at the cost of skill fit.
Drawing on data from the Taiwan Education Panel Survey and Beyond (TEPS-B; N = 4,805), this study examines how different types of social ties shape early-career labor market matching, specifically examining how the associations between social ties and matching outcomes vary by network resources, educational background, and institutional constraints. Using ordinal and multinomial logistic regression models, the analyses show that weak and strong ties generate systematically different matching pathways. Weak ties (particularly those with high prestige) primarily help job seekers fit into professional roles. By validating professional signals, they guide candidates into well-matched positions; however, this mechanism is contingent upon the candidate’s existing merit and tends to lock them into established career tracks. Strong ties, by contrast, primarily help candidates get into the labor market. Through trust-based vouching, they allow candidates to bypass formal screening and cross occupational boundaries. For most workers, this involves a strategic trade-off: sacrificing skill fit in exchange for entry and security, producing a pattern of low fit but high reported satisfaction.
However, for high–human capital professionals with clearly defined trajectories, relying on strong ties to secure jobs often requires abandoning prior professional investments. This forced de-professionalization leads to a "double loss" in both fit and satisfaction. This outcome reflects not only the short-term adaptation costs inherent in career transitions but also the structural constraints of negative social capital, where network obligations compel the sacrifice of professional development. The study thus conceptualizes early-career job search as a strategic tension between institutional verification and relational bypassing in shaping labor market entry and matching.