I've got my first job in the states because a recruiter called me. Same for the second job. The third one was through being acquired. The fourth one, you could call networking if you call showing up for a recruiting event networking. 5th one? You guessed it, recruiter called. Sixth one? Yep. Exactly.
Before that, I worked in Germany. 1st job, applied cold. Second one, applied cold. 3rd one, applied cold. 4th one was working with a friend, so there's that. 5th one, applied cold for contract work, converted into a job. So half networked.
So, if we're generous, 2 out of 11 were networking.
As far as I'm concerned, work on the things you care about, build your skills, and when you switch jobs, make sure it propels you forward in some way. If you're a social person, by all means, enjoy meetups/meeting people because it's something that works for you. But don't force yourself to yet another meetup just because everybody says you should.
So I think part of the answer is clearly saying what you want. I don't know if that holds for positions like Director /VP at large tech companies - these are always somewhat political - but it seems to hold up to pretty much right before that.
YMMV, of course. For all I know, I accidentally have the right magic keywords in my LinkedIn or something. (I don't know. I only update it every few years, so I certainly am not paying enough attention to tell :)
That’s probably safer for them. IME many recruiters doesn’t really have enough knowledge about the role they are trying to recruit for, so it would probably be very risky for them to try to find a ”rough diamond” since they are not really able to make such a judgement call with high enough chance of succeeding.
Define "recruiter".
When I hire the first thing I do is also reach out to my personal network to see if anyone is looking for work or know anyone who is.
My wife did just manage to land a job with a cold application, though, so it's not like either way doesn't work.
I suspect that to be more the case in very large companies. Luckily I have never worked in one.
You need to work on meeting people in your field, at the companies where you want to work. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Go out to meetups. Be a friendly, helpful person. Make friends, lots of them. One of them will make the connection for you at some point.