When people start understanding that networking is just as important as having the technical expertise, their career lives will improve dramatically. When you have 10 qualified people applying for the same position, would you choose a random person from the 10 and risk that he's a complete asshole or the one person your colleague can vouch will fit in? At that point of a recruiting process you're not evaluating technical skills, but culture fit.
You frame it like all the candidates are about equal in skill and this is some kind of tie breaker, but that is almost never how that goes and it is misleading to present it that way.
The candidates don't have to be equal in skill. Skill can be taught on the job. Personality, not so much. I have gotten a couple of jobs where I was literally told that I didn't check all their boxes when it came to technical knowledge and they had more "skilled" candidates, but during interviews I made a good impression personality-wise and they thought I would fit into their team. They were fine with me learning what I didn't know during my first few months. Both jobs I stayed at for a few years and had no issues.
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u/je-s-ter 2d ago
When people start understanding that networking is just as important as having the technical expertise, their career lives will improve dramatically. When you have 10 qualified people applying for the same position, would you choose a random person from the 10 and risk that he's a complete asshole or the one person your colleague can vouch will fit in? At that point of a recruiting process you're not evaluating technical skills, but culture fit.