This is the realest:

In order to prove the old adage, it’s not what you know, but who you know, I’m going to list the exact connections that have led to job opportunities:

My friend’s coworker’s girlfriend’s brother

A fellow community activist’s religious center

A fellow attendee at a film festival’s sister’s company

My friend’s boss’s friend.

My former coworker’s (from the religious center — TRIPLE network) friend’s company

My list of exact connections that led to internship or job opportunities has been:

• My godmother’s former intern
• A college friend’s former internship boss
• The director of a post-bac program I did
• A then-boyfriend’s boss’s colleague + the friend of someone I met at a party (two angles of attack)

When we think about diversity in hiring, many of us default to college application-style thinking, where folders are laid out on a big wooden table and boxes are checked. In reality, your network has much more relevance to getting an interview than does your resume’s relevance to the job. I’ve found this is even truer at small companies, where hiring isn’t a single person’s full-time job and getting people’s attention requires embarrassing degrees of favor-asking. Luckily, people seem willing to help. But, that goes back to Rachel Ahrnsen’s first point: Don’t be an awful person.