What are the most important jobs in the USA?

Why is networking so important in getting software jobs in the USA?

• I am a recent computer science graduate from a US University. As I have generally observed, it is easier to get a job through networking than applying for it on your own. I have seen an average student getting jobs in big companies through networking with their contacts or relatives, while a better student not getting it. It seems a bit unfair. I have worked in an Indian IT company earlier and my observation is that jobs through networking are not as prominent there as they are in USA. My observation may be wrong though. What is the reason that networking is so important in software jobs in USA and why employers prefer it?

• Answer:

  Employers "prefer" networking for the same reason that most people "prefer" meeting potential boyfriends / girlfriends through friends instead of online dating. It's a channel of people and it just so happens to be a pretty good one. And, hey, it's one that they didn't have to expend any extra time / money to get. Why wouldn't they take advantage of this?Hiring good people is difficult and expensive for a company. Sure, the company might get a lot of people applying. But how do you identify the good people?All you've got are their resumes. This tells you something about a candidate, but not all that much. How do you know if they are competent? How do you know if they'll work hard? How do you know if they're smart? How do you know if they're good to work with?You can identify some of that in an interview, but only sort of. Plus, what are you going to do, interview everyone who applies? That's just impossible.You could, of course, just interview people who went to top schools and have great GPAs. Unfortunately, those things aren't especially correlated with strong performance either.A candidate who is referred by one of your employees tends to be a fairly good one, at least compared to the general candidate pool. This is true even for fairly distant connections. Simply the fact that someone knows an employee in your company and hasn't totally turned off that employee tells you something. Of course you'll prioritize interviewing this candidate over someone with an otherwise equivalent resume.Will you prioritize hiring them? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what the reference is. If an employee you trust says, "This person reached out to me and seems okay on paper," an employer might prioritize interviewing them, but an employer probably won't prioritize hiring them. If an employee you trust says, "I worked with this person for three years and he was fantastic," an employer might prioritize hiring them -- as they should. When you see a student landing a job over a better student, this doesn't mean that anything unfair happened at all. On the contrary, the employer probably made what they thought the right decision was. The worse student probably was a better candidate, either because of interview performance or because he/she came in with a strong reference.An employer allowing candidates to be referred through a network might be unfair, but it's in the employer's best interest. They get more candidates and better candidates with less work.One could similarly argue that it's unfair that a woman is more likely to date a guy they met through a friend than online. Given equal information about the guy, then this wouldn't be very sensible for the woman to do. However, the information isn't equal; the fact that she and the guy have a common friend tells her something. What else is she supposed to do, go online and just judge guys based on their looks, self [biased] descriptions, profession, interests, and other junk? That doesn't tell her anything really about his personality.Ultimately, maybe this is unfair and maybe it's not, but everyone's going to act in their best interest.If networking is bigger in the US than India, I would suspect that employers in India are looking more at someone's credentials (school, GPA, etc.) to guide resume selection. They almost have to be. That might be more "fair," but it's probably worse for the employer.An employer cares about fairness for its candidates only to the point that it gets them better employees.