Love-Seeking is a Lot Like Job-Seeking
By learning the underlying systems involved in the creation of relationships in the Western world, we can obtain better outcomes for ourselves in the same way that job-seekers benefit from understanding the strategies underlying a successful job search. There exists plenty of great advice for how to find a job of your liking; often this advice boils down to either searching harder or improving yourself. It's good advice because it works. Just look at the earnings increases from those who go to top business schools: Jumps from $80,000 (USD) to $200,000 in salary are very common. When we struggle with dating, however, we seldom get real advice. Instead, one of the go-to lines is: "Just be yourself!" But what if we suck? Or what if we live in a small town with few people? What if we already are ourselves and still aren't finding the relationships we want?
The solution to these issues is to treat the problem analytically, like a job search. We should search harder and improve ourselves. Fundamentally, employment and relationships follow the same underlying mechanics in the Western world. Both are free markets in which contracts are formed. Both parties participate in the given contract (the employment or the relationship) so long as it is (apparently) mutually beneficial.1 The contract is usually at-will, and either party can quit or fire the other at any point. Nepotism, dumb luck, locality, and convenience play a large role in who gets with any given party (company or person). The most skilled and most attractive are disproportionately well compensated by online job-search and dating applications.
The same questions that we should ask ourselves to assess our employability are the exact same questions we should ask to assess our romantic eligibility. Once we know the questions, and answer them honestly, half the problem is solved.
The Questions to Ask
How qualified are you?
Imagine you are an overweight, severely balding 40-year-old male McDonald's line-cook hitting on an objectively attractive (read: highly sexually dimorphic) Stanford-educated, marathon-running, 28 year-old female entrepreneur. Obviously, 999 out of 1,000 times, your attempt to initiate a date with this woman would not go anywhere. This is because you, the line-cook, are unqualified for the position. This is the same phenomenon as when a garbageman without coding experience applies to a software-engineering role at Google. Qualifications matter. We want companies with compensation and prestige (their value) that match our skills (our value), and companies want employees that match their offer. As either of the two parties feels that the other isn't holding up their end of the deal, the likelihood for a break-up (or metaphorical and literal infidelity) increases exponentially.
We should strive to find a partner with equal value to us. If we are selfless, we can aim for a partner of lower value. If we are greedy and want a partner with higher value, our only solution is to improve our quality.2
How many positions are you applying to?
Take a qualified candidate and have them apply to five suitable open positions online. Chances are, in today's globalized world, this candidate won't even get an interview. The average graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's Master of Software Engineering (Class of 2023) program earned a base salary in excess of $150,000 USD for their first job out of the program. That's pretty high, and rightfully so: These graduates are coming from arguably the best computer science school anywhere in the world.
How many jobs did they apply to on average? Three hundred and ninety-one.
And how many interviews did they receive? Seven.
Qualification does not guarantee a route to success; numeracy does not either, but it gets one closer. Searching for a partner is improved by talking to many many potential partners; the more, the better.
How old are you?
If you're middle-aged or beyond, you will struggle to land (desirable) entry-level jobs. If you're young, you'll find it hard to land (desirable) senior-level jobs requiring lots of experience. If you're older, you'll find it hard to find a (desirable) young partner. If you're younger, you'll generally find it hard to find a (desirable) senior partner. And admittedly, women have it easier in this latter domain.
The fewer matching positions (jobs or potential partners) there are, the harder it is to discover a matching position, and likely the more competition you will face when you finally do apply for the position. Age or seniority are not necessarily limiting factors, but they are probabilistic constraints that we should be aware of so we can set our expectations for how much qualification-improvement or sheer persistence may be required. The greater the disparity in age between parties, the harder finding an open position will be.
How picky are you?
The higher (or more granular) your standards, the harder it will be to find a job or partner. The more criteria you have, the fewer options you have, and the more searching you will have to do. As was alluded to above, age can be one such way that you filter, but so can a whole host of other factors: Looks, intelligence, work-ethic, shared hobbies, desire for children, religion, height, weight, build, and so on; for jobs, then perhaps these factors are pay, impact, job security, work-life balance, options for advancement, location, and so on.
Each filter you add, the fewer of the available options will satisfy those criteria. While there might still be a large number of jobs or people who work for your criteria, the proportion of those drops, and this smaller proportion means that you have to evaluate more overall people or jobs before finding a potential match.
Why is this? Because when reading a job listing or dating profile, you usually can not tell if someone fits your criteria. To find out, you must spend time investigating: It can take many months working a job or going on dates with a person just to realize that it is not "the one". Even the simplest version of investigation, reading a job description or a Tinder biography, takes valuable time. Even someone who matches all your dream criteria (as you've defined it) is liable not to have chemistry with you.
What network effects are involved?
In searching for a job, meeting and following up with recruiters at career fairs provides disproportionately high odds of advancing onto an interview. Similarly, references from current employees help move your application to the top of the stack. And then location even plays a role; if you are not located close enough, you may very well be completely ruled out from the job search, even if you are overqualified. If the job application is publicized online, your odds fall precipitously as hundreds or thousands of other applicants pile on.
In relationships, all of these have equivalents. Meeting a potential partner in person hugely bumps up your odds: You become a real person, defined beyond the attractiveness of your face. References happen through friends or family; humorously, in some cultures, references are the one and only hiring strategy (i.e., it's not a meritocracy). Once a potential partner has decided to go down the dating-application route, they've started accepting applications, and you'll become just one small part of their statistics. If you're further away from someone, the less tantalizing a date is; somewhere in people's brains, they know the expected value of the date (and any relationship) falls, because a medium- or long-distance relationship is rife with inconvenience.
Generally, the closer you are, the most intimately you are acquainted before applying or suggesting a date, the more references you have, and the less online the application-process is, the higher your chances are.
How favourably do you present yourself during the introductory stage?
In jobs, the introductory stage is the interviewing. In relationships, the introductory stage is known as dating (otherwise colloquially known as "talking" or "hanging out"). During this key period, your task is essentially to present yourself truthfully and representatively, but also without volunteering your numerous weaknesses.
Unfortunately, owing to the sunken-cost fallacy, loss-aversion, and the mere-exposure effect, the introductory stage is extra-sensitive. What might qualify as disqualifying behavior in the introductory stage (e.g., lying) may not be disqualifying later on once the position has been secured. This is why the introductory stage is so important and worth singling out.
If you are interested in securing a relationship or job, as unfortunate as it may be, the objectively correct approach is to overindex on your initial presentation. Ideally, however, you'll try as best you can to maintain that quality as the relationship or job endures.
Next Steps
Now that we can clearly see just how obscenely parallel a job search is to a relationship search, we can accept that the popular advice is not right, and we can start thinking of the tools we can use to make our relationship search more effective.
If we are serious about finding a relationship, we should do the following:
- Improve your value. Behave conscientiously, eat right, work out, build muscle, learn to make jokes, put yourself out there, climb the professional ladder, develop impressive hobbies, invest in how you dress and otherwise present yourself. And whatever you do, do not fall for the "be yourself" trap.3
- Talk to many, many, many people. Throw out what you believe to be an absurdly high number, then multiply it by ten.
- Talk to those whom you find attractive or "crush on". Do not waste time thinking about the ideal time to talk to a given person. Just talk to them.
- Talk to people in person. In-person interactions trump dating applications. Both parties, recipient and giver of attention, tend to prefer it. It gives a lot of information (posture, vocality, intelligence, humor, et c.) all at once.
- Get on dating applications. Dating applications are worse than in-person interactions, but they help with numeracy. Just like with a job search, career fairs and online applications both help. However, be aware that there is extreme message/attention inequality on the applications.
- If you are in an area with a small number of available partners, strongly consider moving to a more populated area, such as a dense city.
And that's it. It's that simple. Notice that three of the six bullets start with "Talk to". Talking (in person) to many people is the single most important factor for success.
Common Counterarguments (FAQ)
Aren't there plenty of people who end up in relationships without "forcing" it?
The people who end up in great positions that both last the test of time and do so without effort are the product of pure, dumb luck. These people don't really exist nearly as much as we think, but because it takes time for the data to come out (e.g., for the relationships to fail after many years or decades), because it's easier to live in blissful ignorance of the reality that effort in finding a partner matters, and because the hyper-successful often downplay their effort4, it seems more common than it truly is.
Isn't it inhumane to be so algorithmic about finding a partner?
Unlike with job applications, many of us are reluctant to admit that finding a partner is a numbers-game. Many of us who believe this fall into one of two categories:
The fortunate, who by dumb luck had success and find it's more romantic/magical (or simply easier) to not change their beliefs; and
the unfortunate who haven't found a partner and find it easier to blame the world for their lack of success (because it's easier). I definitely fell into the latter camp for much of my life.
Ultimately, even if we avoid algorithmatizing our relationship-seeking, mathematically-oriented Harvard graduates like Christian Rudder (cofounder of OkCupid) are already algorithmatizing our dating lives for us. Dating applications rely on both simple and complex mathematical models to expose similarly rated individuals to each other. There is little way to get around this numerical reality.
Why try to change my value to match whom I want when opposites attract anyway?
Opposites do not attract. This is just about the silliest widely-accepted narrative there is. Opposites repulse. Opposites only attract in the sense of sexual dimorphism: Short women may prefer taller men; men with wider shoulders may prefer women with narrower shoulders. But it ends just about there, right in the domain of traits that signal masculinity (in men) and femininity (in women), which are just proxies for fertility. When we measure these apparently opposite traits in terms of how they affect ratings of attractiveness, we realize that these traits do not represent opposites at all. The ten-out-of-ten woman wants a ten-out-of-ten man and vice versa.
Men who are sensitive do not prefer women who are un-empathetic or rude. Women who care about having children do not find exciting the long-term relationship prospects of men who are totally disinterested in children. More obviously, as proven through data, women of race X prefer men of race X, and men of race Y prefer women of race Y. Men who voted for Biden prefer women who also voted for Biden.
Generally, people prefer that their partner be of roughly equal value to them, at least when first dating. In fact, equality in value helps predict relationship duration; the more inequal the attractiveness of two partners, the shorter their relationship is likely to be. We get what we put in. If we work to have good qualities, we will find it much easier to find the same in return.