A personal connection, with someone who is in a hiring position, has a high likelihood hiring you <i>outside</i> of their interview process. With a vested interest to hire you in the company, it&#x27;s much more likely that the interview process will be a more collaborative experience- such as coffee with a CTO to discuss the problems they&#x27;re having.<p>And it doesn&#x27;t need to be &quot;best friend&quot; level of personal connection, it&#x27;s someone you often see at that AngularJS meetup or whatever- after three or four pleasant conversations you&#x27;d be surprised how invested they can be to hire you- especially because they already know what your skill set is and would only look at you if you fit the problem they&#x27;re having.<p>This is the value proposition of going to Meetups, Conferences, Talks, etc. You start to see who the &quot;regulars&quot; are, and persons in a hiring position tend to bias very heavily to people they are already familiar with.