Not sure if I have any advice per se, but here's a quick hack that worked for me when I first got out of school: 1) Find a few companies you WANT to work at (l

Not sure if I have any advice per se, but here's a quick hack that worked for me when I first got out of school: 1) Find a few companies you WANT to work at (legitimately). 2) If they have openings in your realm, send a quick email to the senior-most person in that group (e.g. SVP Hardware if you want an embedded software job). Just introduce yourself, say you applied via the standard HR process, but wanted to say how psyched you are to possibly work there. Three lines max. 3) What happened is the senior person forwarded my email to the hiring manager, and I instantly went from just-another-resume to "hey, Johnny SVP thinks I should look into this kid". This is how I landed jobs 2-4 out of school. PS - you'll feel dirty. That's OK...just be concise.