As other posters have said, this only really works if you have a network. Zeroth-order referrals (i.e. they call you) work best, first-order referrals (i.e. you know someone at the company) work decently well, and second-order referrals (you know someone who knows someone to refer you) are a guided shot in the dark.

People who have networks all know this. The issue is that a shocking number of people don't have any network at all. These tend to be the sorts of people who are either actively antisocial at work (the "coworkers aren't your friends" type) or job hop so frequently that they don't spend enough time at any single job to develop any meaningful professional, let alone personal connections.

or you are working for small companies with people who have no (useful) connections. i worked with one for 10 years. not a single referral. a few connections from the university. nothing. they all work in small companies that are not hiring or simply have no pull to provide a meaningful reference.

looking back, the best options i got was from active networking in tech and business communities. actually, all of my jobs and clients come through that. except the most current one, which is from reconnecting to an old client, but there too the initial connection and the reconnection happened through a tech community.

And juniors. I’m in a masters program right now and everyone’s got a network, it just happens to be filled with poor starving grad students instead of FAANG super stars :)

I job hop frequently, and have a large zeroth-order network because I did good work at each one.

When I am in a hiring role, I am not flipping through memories of good times with former coworkers that I had deep and meaningful time with -- I'm thinking back to who was the verb who got ish done and will make my project a success.

Unless you are a hermit, everyone has a network, even if it's small. Everyone has a few friends, a brother/sister/dad/mom/cousin, a few people in their town they know. All of those people know someone else, and that's your initial pool of job opportunities to look at.

This might not get you into your dream company. But it can get you a next job to grow from.

For one of my jobs I had no contacts in the industry so I emailed someone at the company who went to my school, mentioned we both went there, and could they meet for coffee. I then drove 2 hours to meet him. We discussed what was happening at his company, are there opportunities, and he referred me.