Network. It's never about what you know, always about who you know. Everyone likes to pretend it's a techy meritocracy, but it totally isn't. There isn't a dev

Network. It's never about what you know, always about who you know. Everyone likes to pretend it's a techy meritocracy, but it totally isn't. There isn't a dev shop on the planet that hires purely on technical skill and ignores all the social factors. The valid method of bypassing the contact whitelist is to have someone who works at the company (or knows the hiring manager socially) recommend you. Turn up to meetups, tech events, anything where the people you want to work with hang out. Make friends. Buy a few beers. Volunteer for stuff. If you're an introvert and don't do this easily then try contributing to a FOSS project and getting invited into their comms channels. Again, make friends. Sorry, this sucks I know. But it's how humans are.