If I am a former coworker, and I reach out to you, and give you a URL, it's a unique URL that ties back to me as an internal referral. You are then given higher

If I am a former coworker, and I reach out to you, and give you a URL, it's a unique URL that ties back to me as an internal referral. You are then given higher priority over the general stack: you have just cut through the automated tracking system. On the other side, we will have 200 people apply in a day for some jobs. 190 of them will be people we wouldn't even consider for the job, and it's entirely possible that a blind submission that is good will get swept up with the bad. This just doesn't happen with internal submissions. Now, the days of "any referral of X is an auto-hire" is gone for any company under 20 people, at this point, because there are many ways that can go wrong legally. However, that doesn't mean it's useless: you have a significant advantage with an internal submission.