Scott Galloway Says Being Social Is the Key to Landing Jobs — But Most People Are Doing It Wrong

I stumbled onto a Fortune interview this week where Scott Galloway — professor at NYU Stern, author, and someone who has a habit of saying uncomfortable things that turn out to be true — made a claim that sounds almost too simple to be useful. He said the key to landing jobs right now is just… being as social as possible. Full stop. And I had to stop scrolling.

Because here I was thinking the answer was optimizing your CV, learning a new AI tool, or cracking some algorithm on job boards. Turns out, according to Galloway, the people winning at the job market are the ones who treat their career like a social sport — not a paperwork exercise.

Why Social Networking Is the Key to Landing Jobs in 2026

Here’s a number that genuinely shocked me: according to LinkedIn’s own research, somewhere between 70% and 85% of jobs are filled through networking. Not job boards. Not cold applications. Relationships. That means the majority of open positions never even get publicly posted — they get filled through a conversation someone had at a conference, a DM to a former colleague, or a mutual introduction.

Galloway’s point — made in the Fortune interview published this week — is that in a job market where AI tools now filter hundreds of thousands of applications automatically, the only thing that still requires a human is a human connection. A referral bypasses the algorithm entirely. A personal recommendation from someone inside a company carries more weight than a perfect resume ever could.

And this isn’t just vibes. A landmark study from Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter — still one of the most cited papers in social science — found that people are far more likely to find jobs through weak ties (distant acquaintances, former classmates, industry contacts they’ve met once) than through close friends. Why? Because your close circle mostly knows the same things you do. Your loose connections move in completely different circles and have access to information you’d never find on your own.

What Galloway Actually Means by ‘Being Social’

Here’s where most people get this wrong. Being social for career purposes doesn’t mean showing up to networking events, handing out business cards, and saying “let’s connect sometime” seventeen times in one evening. That version of networking is so hollow that most people would rather stay home — and honestly, fair enough.

What Galloway is describing is something more intentional and more human. It’s about building relationships before you need them. It’s reaching out to someone whose work you genuinely admire and telling them a specific thing they said helped you. It’s commenting thoughtfully on LinkedIn posts — not “great insight!” but actual engagement that shows you read it. It’s grabbing coffee with a former colleague with zero agenda except staying in touch.

The distinction matters enormously. Transactional networking — where you contact someone only when you want something — is immediately obvious to anyone on the receiving end. People feel used. They don’t respond. And they definitely don’t recommend you for a role.

“The best time to build your network was five years ago. The second best time is today — but without an agenda attached.” — adapted from Galloway’s broader body of work on career building

The Hidden Job Market Is Bigger Than You Think

Let me paint a picture. A hiring manager at a mid-sized tech company in Berlin needs a senior product manager. She has a job board budget, sure. But before she posts anything publicly, she sends a message to three former colleagues: “Hey — know anyone good?” Within 48 hours she has four names. By day five, she’s already doing informal chats with two of them. The role never gets posted externally.

This happens constantly. At every level of seniority. In every industry. In every country.

And yet most job seekers spend 95% of their time sending cold applications into automated systems designed to filter them out, and maybe 5% of their time on the thing that actually works. Galloway’s frustration — and I felt it too, honestly — is that this isn’t some secret. The data is everywhere. People just keep doing what’s comfortable over what’s effective.

Social Networking as the Key to Landing Jobs — A Practical Starting Point

So what do you actually do with this? Galloway didn’t just make a provocative statement — he was pretty specific in the Fortune interview about the behavior change required. And I’ve broken it down into something that doesn’t require you to become an extrovert overnight.

Start with five people. Five former colleagues, classmates, or professional contacts you haven’t spoken to in more than six months. Not people you want a job from. Just people you genuinely liked working with or learning from. Send them a short, specific message — something that references something real about your time together or something they recently posted or published. No ask. Just reconnecting.

Then go one step further: show up somewhere physical or virtual where your industry gathers. One event per quarter is enough to start. The goal isn’t to collect contacts. It’s to have two or three real conversations with people doing interesting work. That’s it.

And here’s the part nobody tells you: follow up. One message after the event. “Really enjoyed our conversation about X. Here’s that article I mentioned.” That follow-up is what separates someone who goes to events from someone who actually builds a network.

Why This Matters Even More Now

I’ll be honest — when I first read the headline “be as social as possible”, I rolled my eyes a little. It sounded like the kind of obvious advice that gets dressed up as insight. But the more I read through Galloway’s reasoning and the research behind it, the more it felt less like advice and more like a diagnosis.

We are living through a moment where AI has made it cheaper than ever to apply to hundreds of jobs at once. Which means employers are being flooded with applications at a scale they can’t meaningfully evaluate. The response — more automation, more filtering, stricter keyword matching — creates a system where the technically qualified candidate with a warm referral beats the slightly-more-qualified stranger every single time.

Being social isn’t a soft skill anymore. According to the data Galloway is referencing, and according to LinkedIn’s own 2025 workforce trends report, it’s the most reliable career infrastructure you can build — regardless of your industry, your country, or your seniority level. The hidden job market doesn’t care about your resume format. It cares whether someone in the room already knows your name.

Last updated: May 28, 2026