The Networking Fallacy

Dr. Marcia F. Robinson is a senior certified HR professional, diversity strategist, and curator of The HBCU Career Center job board. She advises organizations on building inclusive talent pipelines and improving diversity recruiting outcomes.

Somehow, we have allowed “just network” to become the most overused and least examined advice in modern career guidance. Can networking help? Of course. But positioning it as the primary—or worse, the only—pathway to employment is a fallacy that lets employers off the hook to manage better processes and quietly reinforces inequality. A 2018 PayScale study found that referral programs overwhelmingly favored white men. White women were 12% less likely to get referrals, men of color 26% less likely, and women of color 35% less likely.

When we tell job seekers they “just need to network,” we shift responsibility away from organizations to look for, meet, and set up good processes to make good offers. A hiring approach rooted in referrals limits your pool of potential job seekers and can exclude candidates who lack proximity to powerful stakeholders in your organization. Of course, individuals must take ownership of their careers — but on the flip side of the job search, employers shouldn’t require current employees to bring in talent. 

Hiring through referrals mostly favors those who already sit closer to opportunity: alumni of elite schools, legacy hires, industry insiders, people with time, money, and social capital. That is not a meritocracy. That is privilege recycling itself. Take it from a career professional who has worked to democratize opportunities for the underserved. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that about 38% of college students in 2020 were first-generation, without legacy opportunities.

For first-generation professionals, career switchers, older workers, caregivers, veterans, and many Black and Brown professionals, the advice to “network harder” can feel less like guidance and more like gaslighting. 

Employers continue to rely on referrals and “informal” pipelines (black holes of connections) that replicate the same demographics year after year. The reality is, job seekers should know that sometimes a tough job hunt is a result of systemic issues within hiring practices. Part of our work in empowering job seekers is making them aware that not having a massive connected network isn’t a failure. 

Let’s be clear: employers should be seeking talent, not waiting for it to stumble into the right happy hour or getting a LinkedIn DM. Talent should be able to seek opportunity through transparent job postings, skills-based hiring, fair screening practices, and accountable recruiting systems. When networking becomes a substitute for sound hiring strategy, organizations miss exceptional candidates who don’t already know someone in one of their cubicles. 

This is not an argument against professional relationships. It is an argument against laziness masquerading as wisdom and black hole job search advice.

If organizations are serious about equity, performance, and future-ready workforces, they must build accessible pathways to employment—not outsource hiring to social proximity. Networking should be a supplemental strategy for job seekers, not the gate.