It’s basically useless when you’ve tried your network and it’s all dead ends. This advice feels like the “don’t be ugly” of the employment world.
Also, if you are the “first” in your family for something (first college grad/first grad school grad, etc.), you have a HUGE disadvantage to those who have family members that can give well-informed opinions and advice. This was especially true in law school - students with lawyers in their family did far better during and immediately after law school than those students (like me) who were first to graduate college, let alone first for an advanced degree. And by “far better” I don’t simply mean “daddy got them a great job straight out of law school,” I’m talking about better academic performance, better utilization of available school career resources, better networking skills, you name it.
Yeah there’s that about the dead ends. Been there as well. My own field now has a lot more gains to be had from networking. Past ones, not so much. Maybe it depends on the nature of the job as well? I’m not sure. I imagine it’s a lot more helpful in sales.
I’m not great at it myself honestly. I could really learn from my spouse. She’s an SME in a niche field and literally every job after the first one, she was recruited by someone in her network. But that’s neither here, nor there.
Anyway, that’s all I got. Rant over.
I got a lot of this advice trying to get into academia. From what I found, knowing someone somewhere is actively detrimental to getting a job. Not only will you not get a job because of your connections, people will avoid giving you a job because hiring from a network speaks ill of the academic rigor of the institution. Whether it’s real or not, the image is maximal meritocracy, and that means the traditional advice from the corporate world is useless.