Availability of Social Capital upon First Job Search of University Graduates with Different Socioeconomic Status

Sa？etak The aim of the research was to analyze socio-demographic predictors of social networks that university graduates can rely on while seeking their first employment – assessment of their size, strength of social connections and status of network participants. The network size is defined as an overall number of people an individual is connected with, and the network strength as a closeness of social relation between an individual and other persons in the network. Close friends and relatives are examples of strong ties, while rarely contacted acquaintances represent weak ties that are socially, economically and frequently physically distant. The status of a participant is operationalised as an educational, employment and economic status of those who form the individual’s network. The research was conducted on a sample of 730 university graduates of public institutions of higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The data were gathered through an online survey and are based on self-assessment. It has been determined that the individual’s status predicts their assessment of their own social network: average salary is a positive independent predictor of the network’s size, while average salary and father’s employment status are positive predictors of the network participant’s status that university graduates can rely on while seeking their first employment. The researched socioeconomic characteristics of university graduates explain between 2.8% and 3.45% of variances due to individual differences in the experience of social capital. The analyzed socioeconomic characteristics of university graduates were not connected with the experience of the strength of ties that form a social network