it can be hard to know which is which sometimes.
For instance, a secretary who has a friend who is "really good with computers" who submits her resume for a job as a DBA, and that friend gets hired on the basis of that recommendation -- yes, the friend was someone I knew. I guess you could say the friend earned the job based on the criteria put forward, but not on any basis that is good for her, the company, or the DBA profession as a whole.
The staff member probably knows the applicant very well, so its basically like having the applicant be interviewed for months instead of just once. Sure the staff member could be recommending them just because he's a friend, but I'm assuming most people would not risk their reputation recommending someone who was incompetent.
So the job could have been just handed to you, or you could have actually passed the equivalent of an interview that lasted years.
Maybe I've just been around the wrong people, but this seems the primary motivation behind the recommendation one friend would give on behalf of another. Competence never entered the picture; even when I would ask about it, I was always told "it's not what you know, it's who you know," as if to reassure themselves as much as to admonish me. In some cases, the recommendations are truly noble-minded, but never underestimate the social pressure people have to practice nepotism.
I will caveat this by saying I've been hired in one or two places where the recruitment tango started through a recommendation. One of those places, it stopped mattering as soon as the phone screen began. The other, well, the person who recommended me was the hiring manager, so I'm not sure that counts. :-)
i wanted the job that i earned instead of the one i was handed. but, i'm kind of hardheaded about that type of thing.