I've placed people at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta AI, Databricks, and Stripe in the last year. They all did the same thing that 90% of job searchers skip. They built referral paths before submitting a single application. The average cold application callback rate in 2026 is around 2-4%. With a warm intro, it's 5x that. Every candidate I coached who got an offer at a top company had a referral on file before the resume went in. Every single one. But here's what most people get wrong about…