Want to be a GM when you grow up? Read this.

[davearm]

Not just you and a thousand guys, you and a thousand guys who've been living and dying with their home team since they were three years old and have advanced degrees from Ivy League schools or MIT, some of whom have recommendations from people that the guys doing the hiring have heard of.

You have to have some way to cull down the 8-foot stack of resumes. A good place to start is keeping the ones where someone you respect vouched for them. Not the optimal thing to do, but it's better than interviewing 564 people for each unpaid intern slot and downselecting from there.

Exactly. Somehow the sea of highly qualified, highly motivated applicants needs to be whittled down to something manageable. How better to do that than by relying on the recommendations of your trusted "insider" colleagues.

And this is really no different than the hiring process for any greatly coveted, scarcely available position in any industry.