You can’t rely on personal contacts to get your foot in the door anymore. Thanks to the Federal Government (and in particular something called OFCCP) nobody will accept a faxed or hand-delivered resume anymore. They all want to force you through a web portal where you are forced to self-select all of your race, gender and group identity info so the employer can cover their rear by proving to the Government that they are interviewing and hiring enough people from each of the protected groups.
Having Joe from your old company hand your resume to the HR Manager and put in a good word for you is RACISM, dontcha know...
Some people’s best bets might be seeking work with small businesses, the small ones which are too small to have layers of management or HR departments. These types of businesses are too small to set up internal P & P to screen job applicants on race, gender, etc.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but, aren’t certain companies, say with 20 or fewer employers, exempt from a lot of the record keeping and filing government paperwork proving they don’t discriminate, etc???? I thought the smallest of businesses were exempt from the bureaucracy of tracking the minutia of race and gender and ethnicity of their employees and applicants. Is this true???