Relationship Hiring Is Real. So Is Its Bias Problem. What the communications industry owes the talent it’s been overlooking

Angee Linsey:

Let’s say something out loud that people in hiring have always known but rarely put in writing: the most powerful currency in the job market isn’t your resume. It’s who will say your name when you’re not in the room.

And that has never been equally available to everyone.

Consider what a hiring manager is dealing with right now. A single posting attracts hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes — many of them AI-polished to mirror the exact language of the job description. Hiring managers and internal recruiting teams are overwhelmed. They cannot meaningfully differentiate.

So what does the hiring manager do? They leave reviewing the masses to the internal recruiting team and they reach out to their network. They ask the people they know and trust: “Who do you know? Who should I be talking to?”

As a former executive recruiter (and current career coach) with more than 20 years in this business, I’ve lived this from both sides. If someone I respect calls to recommend a candidate, I take that call. Every time. In my mind, I’m not being biased. I’m leaning into a trusted referral. But here’s the question we don’t ask often enough: whose trust? And who gets left out of those calls entirely?

The Bias Hiding in Plain Sight

Referral-based hiring has always advantaged people with access — to the right schools, the right industries, the right social and professional circles. That access doesn’t fall equally. It has historically skewed toward those who were already well-represented in positions of influence.

When a hiring manager retreats to their network under pressure, they are almost always drawing from a pool that looks a lot like them. Not out of malice — out of habit, comfort, and the path of least resistance. The result is that talented professionals who haven’t had access to those circles — because of race, gender, socioeconomic background, geography, or simply a different career path — are shut out before the conversation even starts.

This is the part that needs to be named plainly: relationship hiring, left unexamined, keeps the same people in the room. And the strongest teams aren’t built that way. They are built from different experiences, perspectives, and ways of solving problems — the kind of range that doesn’t happen by accident and rarely happens when hiring managers only tap the networks they already have.

As AI accelerates the retreat from formal hiring processes, the stakes are getting higher.

What Organizations Owe the Talent They’ve Been Missing

The burden of this cannot fall entirely on the individual. Yes, building relationship equity matters — we’ll get to that. But first: organizations and hiring leaders have a responsibility that most are not yet meeting.

When you reach out to your network to find candidates, whose network are you actually reaching? Is it the same ten people it was five years ago? Are you actively cultivating relationships with professionals from communities that have historically been underrepresented in your pipeline — before you have a role to fill?

Diversifying your hire addresses the symptom. The real work is in diversifying whose trust you build and whose recommendations you seek — long before a role opens up. It requires hiring managers and senior leaders to deliberately expand the circles they draw from, engage with professional communities outside their immediate orbit, and sponsor talent they might not yet know well enough to vouch for — and then get to know them.

For a global communications community, this is not an abstract HR conversation. Communications leaders shape organizational culture and narrative. If anyone is positioned to lead this shift from the inside, it’s the people reading this.

And for the Individual: Start Where You Are

None of this absolves us of our own agency. If you are earlier in your career, or if you simply haven’t prioritized building your professional network, here is the most honest thing I can tell you:

The best time to start was early in your career. The second best time is today.

You don’t need to have grown up in the right circles. You need to find and invest in the right communities now. Professional organizations, industry associations, leadership programs, employee resource groups — these exist precisely to create access for people who weren’t handed it. They are legitimate, powerful on-ramps, and they work when you show up to them with genuine intention rather than a transactional mindset.

Seek mentors who will give you an honest perspective. Cultivate sponsors and champions — people who will use their own credibility to open doors for you. Create your own personal “Board of Directors” with the idea that some of the people you seek for this role will be different than you. Build relationships characterized by mutual generosity and long-term trust. Be visible in your field. Be known for something.

And if you are someone with access, use it to pull others in. Recommend people outside your immediate circle. Make introductions. Say names in rooms where it counts.

The Question Worth Asking

The “who you know” hiring approach isn’t going away — if anything, it’s becoming the dominant force in a market overwhelmed by noise. The question is whether we allow it to keep reproducing the same networks, or whether we do the harder, more intentional work of expanding whose relationships get to matter.

For communications professionals — people who build trust, shape narratives, and influence organizational culture for a living — that question is not someone else’s to answer.

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Angee Linsey is a former executive recruiter and current career coach with 20+ years of experience, and the founder of Dare to Be Deliberate (www.daretobedeliberate.com).