I've gotten all my jobs except my first by gathering a list of companies that I thought were interesting on whatever axes I was considering at the time, then fi

I've gotten all my jobs except my first by gathering a list of companies that I thought were interesting on whatever axes I was considering at the time, then finding people in my extended network to refer me to them; sort of a hybrid approach. It's worked well enough. That said, I got my first (and longest tenured) job by applying to a random "who's hiring interns" post on HN.