I haven’t seen the power of referrals for 10 years now. At work I can give you a “referral” by uploading your resume to our ATS. That’s it. It receives no more consideration than if you were to click Easy Apply on LinkedIn as far as I’m aware.

I wonder if we might see the rise a broad but weak "yes that's a real person" referral system as opposed to "I know that person will be good for the job" referrals.

That type of referral indeed is mostly worthless (it might get you actually looked at by a human instead of rejected before that). Useful referrals are the kind where you go chat with your friend, figure out what they want in a job, then go find the hiring manager and tell them about this amazing ex-colleague who's a perfect fit for the role. That gets the candidate treated seriously. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but definitely gives the candidate a fair shot.

At a former employer, I sort of hated the referral ambassador or whatever it was called thing (with financial rewards attached I think). I always felt it encouraged quantity over quality. I actually sent a couple people I knew off on their merry way and suggested a couple others just go to the job site. On the other hand, I got several jobs through people I actually knew and had worked with in some manner.

I referred two friends at my former employer and the process has changed in the span of 5 years; first one needed at least a short recommendation, second was pretty much fire and forget (and hope for the bonus if they get hired)

Referrals in my company basically just guarantee that the resume isn't immediately thrown in the trash, doesn't really help anyone's odds otherwise. I suspect in most companies it's similar, if they even get that much of a benefit (unless you're upper management (aka nepotism) I guess)

Nepotism is most associated with relatives although I guess it doesn't have to be. But I've definitely gotten several jobs through senior managers I had worked with which largely bypassed the whole HR system where it existed.

> Nepotism is most associated with relatives although I guess it doesn't have to be.

IIRC "nepotism" is specifically family/relatives, and the larger Venn-diagram circle would be "favoritism."

Wikipedia disagrees even if relatives seems to be the predominant meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism