Will agree on the connections side of things. My team recently hired a new engineer, having received of thousands of applicants, including many through the corporate referral program. The only people who made it past recruiter screening were those whose referrers messaged the hiring manager directly. With recruiters getting blasted with unqualified applicants (mostly migrants with only a cert to their name) and AI applications, it's hard to get any legit applications some daylight to be reviewed.