<p>My department head got me my first job. It was a small department. The career center had about 1000 people to place. My department head had less than 20. </p>
<p>Another thing that works (worked twice for me) When your son sends his resume to that perfect dream job wait 2-3 days then call the company. Tell them you applied and want to make sure the resume got there (not lost in cyber space) and wait for them to pull it up. Then say, well since I have you on the phone, Do you have any questions about my ability to do the job? On the spot phone interview. You have put a voice to a piece of paper and made yourself more of a person in their eyes and you (your son) have shown yourself to be a go getter. I found it worked well with smaller companies. With larger companies you have to worm your way through things like LinkedIn and local ASME events to hopefully get a name that can give you the name of somebody who knows the right person to speak to. Yea it really can get that complicated. </p>
<p>And HR, HR’s number one job is to make sure the company doesn’t hire a bad person. They really don’t care how many good resumes get tossed as long as they personally aren’t blamed for letting a disaster in the door. If the job sits vacant for 6 months in the process that just proves how hard their job is and how important they are to the company. Go around HR every chance you get! You want to talk to the hiring manager who knows that you can’t have 8 years experience in a piece of software that was only invented 2 years ago!</p>