Regarding the notion about the advantage of social referrals being awareness of a position opening discussed awhile back by @ucbalumnus: I see this occurring with parents helping their student get undergraduate summer research internships. Employees are the first to be informed when internships are available and open, and are often encouraged to recruit prospective students. In fact, employees who have HS or undergrad students will often let HR know that they have a prospective student who is available for a summer internship. I cannot say definitively, but having a summer internship for an employee’s student may be an unspecified perk of employment. I have also seen where sons and daughters of colleagues in the field have obtained summer internships, influenced by the connection of their parents. The summer internships were intended and structured to provide some in depth experiences of technical work in the specific scientific area, and not intended to be a job recruitment tool. In general, I think the internship program provided experiences which helped the student decide to continue with a scientific career, or not. I did not see that the interns who got their positions via parental connections were any less successful than others who had no such influence.
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