This article originally ran on fastcompany.com, as a Fast Company Executive Board article, authored by H22 CEO and Founder, Heather Jerrehian.
AI tweaks your résumé and cover letter. You submit them via a portal. An Application Tracking System scanner strips it for keywords. The algorithm decides if you’re worth a human’s time. And then, more often than not—silence.
We’ve normalized a hiring process that is, at its core, profoundly dehumanizing. And somewhere along the way, we convinced an entire generation that the path to meaningful work ran straight through a job board.
It doesn’t. It never really did.
I’ve been working closely with Gen Z professionals navigating one of the most disorienting job markets in modern history—young people doing everything right by the current rulebook and still coming up empty. Apply to everything. Optimize your résumé. Use AI to tailor your cover letter. Play the numbers game. And then wait and wait. Only to be ghosted after doing a project and three rounds of interviews by a company that posted a role it may never have intended to fill.
The rulebook is broken. And the young people following it most faithfully are paying the highest price.
A trusted network is better than an algorithm
What I’ve found actually works—for Gen Z, and frankly for anyone—is something far older and more human than any algorithm—the transferable trust of a real network.
Here’s what I mean. Every person I’ve brought onto the team building H22 AI has come through a trusted connection. Not a job board. Not a recruiter’s cold message. A person I already trusted said, “you should meet this person”—and their credibility traveled with that introduction. I didn’t need to start from zero with a stranger. I started from a foundation of trust that already existed, transferred from one relationship to another.
That’s not an algorithm. That’s how human beings have always worked together, before we outsourced the process to platforms and portals.
The concept is simple, but its implications are profound. When someone in your network recommends another person, their reputation becomes a bridge. You’re not evaluating a resume—you’re inheriting a relationship. And that changes everything about how the conversation begins, how quickly trust builds, and how likely a real opportunity is to follow.
Everyone has a network
The most common pushback I hear, especially from younger professionals, is some version of “I don’t have that kind of network.” And I understand why it feels that way. The word “networking” conjures images of conference name tags and awkward cocktail parties with executives you’ll never see again. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Everyone has a network. It just might not look like what you think it should.
Your network is the professor who saw something in you. The neighbor who has worked in your target industry for 20 years. The former colleague who moved to a company you’ve been watching. The friend of a friend who was just complaining about a gap on their team. Networks aren’t built from the top down, collecting CEOs like trading cards. They’re built laterally and organically, from genuine relationships with people who actually know you.
How to build a network
The practical steps are less complicated than most people expect. Here are three ways to get started.
- Tell everyone you’re looking—and I mean everyone, not just your professional contacts. You have no idea who is connected to whom until you ask.
- Have a personal pitch ready—even for people who know you well. They may not know what you’re specifically looking for now, or that you’ve added a new skill or qualification since you last spoke.
- Ask directly for what you need—advice, an introduction, a conversation. Most people genuinely want to help. They just need to know how.
Final thoughts
There’s something worth sitting with here beyond the tactical, though. The fact that every member of my team arrived through a trusted human connection isn’t just a hiring anecdote. It’s a signal about what’s been lost in the industrialization of the job search—and what becomes possible when we restore the human element to it.
The job market is difficult right now for structural reasons that won’t resolve overnight. AI is reshaping entry-level roles faster than new ones are being created. Hiring processes have become so automated that genuine talent routinely falls through the cracks. And the psychological toll of applying into a void—of being evaluated by systems before you ever reach a person—is real and cumulative.
But the antidote to a dehumanized process is a deeply human one. Build real relationships. Tend to them before you need them. And trust that when the right moment comes, the people who know you—and the people they know—will matter more than any algorithm ever could.
The network you have right now, and its transferable trust, is more powerful than you think. Start there.
