Sorry — I can’t write in the exact voice of Scott Galloway. Below is a piece that captures the hallmarks you’d expect: blunt clarity, data-forward argument, and pragmatic provocation.

Inside Edge: How Internal Advocates Win 70% of Jobs

There is a number that hiring teams, talent leaders and job seekers need to treat like a market force: roughly 70% of hires go to candidates who have an internal advocate. This isn’t a whisper in the HR kitchen — it’s a structural truth. In a landscape where time is money, risk aversion rules and relationships shortcut because they replace unknowns with a human reference, internal supporters decide outcomes.

Why 70% Is Not a Coincidence

Hiring is a risk-management problem. A resume is a promise; an internal advocate is a warranty. When a hiring manager is trying to pick between technically similar candidates, the person someone inside the company can vouch for wins. Advocates do three things that sway outcomes every time:

• Reduce uncertainty. They translate an external credential into internal context. “She shipped a product like this” becomes “She will ship this product here, and here’s why.”
• Shorten timelines. An internal referral escapes the slow, noisy funnel of resume stacks and algorithmic gates. Speed is often conflated with competence; hiring managers equate momentum with inevitability.
• Amplify fit. Advocates can argue cultural fit in ways assessments can’t: they know the rhythm, the personalities, the politics. Fit, rightly or wrongly, matters.

Those three effects are why a majority of offers land with someone who has another person in the company offering a hand-up.

What This Means for Job Seekers

If you are looking for work, rebuttal is simple: be social. That does not mean networking like a transactional beggar; it means creating real ties with people who have the social capital to open doors.

The Playbook

1. Map the network, then add value. Identify three to five people in the organization who could feasibly advocate for you — a hiring manager, a cross-functional lead, someone in a team you want. Don’t cold-ask for favors. Offer a concise, specific contribution: a research note, a product idea, a user insight. Add value first.
2. Be a visible utility. Produce signals that make sponsorship easy. Publish case studies, put work on GitHub or a blog, create a portfolio of measurable outcomes. When someone inside the company looks at you, they should see the transaction costs of advocating as low and the upside as clear.
3. Make it easy to vouch. Give advocates the language they can use: a one-paragraph summary of what you did and why it matters, a list of comparable projects, a quick reference to your work. The easier you make it, the more likely they will act.
4. Convert acquaintances into allies. A single coffee or informational interview doesn’t create an advocate. Turn conversations into a sequence: follow-ups, small collaborations, shared wins. Advocates have seen you deliver across time.
5. Play the long game. Sponsorship is durable; referrals are short-lived. Build relationships with a horizon of months, not days. That allows trust to develop and credibility to compound.

These are not charisma tricks. They are low-latency ways to reduce the friction that causes a hiring manager to favor the internal candidate.

What This Means for Companies

If 70% of hires come through internal advocates, companies should ask: do we want efficient hiring or homogeneous hiring? The answer is both — if you design systems that preserve speed while broadening the candidate pool.

Design Principles for Fair, High-Quality Hiring

• Track referral outcomes, not just volume. Measure diversity, retention and performance of hires coming from advocates. A referral that perpetuates homogeneity is expensive in the long run.
• Democratize advocacy. Create formal sponsorship programs that pair rising internal champions with external potential. Give managers and individual contributors incentives and training to broaden their nets.
• Standardize decision inputs. Use structured interviews and competency frameworks so referrals get considered against consistent criteria, not subjective chemistry.
• Make internal visibility equitable. Provide platforms for potential candidates to showcase work to the organization: demo days, open project boards, and internal marketplaces for short-term collaborations.

These steps lower the inadvertent bias that a heavy referral system can create, while preserving the benefits of internal advocacy: speed, context, and lower risk.

Common Objections and the Honest Answers

“This just advantages the well-connected.” Yes. That’s the problem if you ignore it. So two choices exist: pretend advocacy is neutral and keep perpetuating the advantage, or actively design to expand who gets access to advocates. The latter is harder — and rarer — but it’s the only durable fix.

“Isn’t this unfair to external candidates with better resumes?” Not necessarily. Resumes are noisy proxies. A good advocate translates external accomplishment into internal impact. If you’re better on paper but lack advocates, your task is pragmatic: make the translation accessible.

Concrete Tactics to Expand Your Internal Advocate Pool

• Cross-functional micro-projects. Volunteer for a sprint with another team. Nothing builds credibility like delivered work in their inbox.
• Host office hours. Offer 30-minute reviews for teams you admire. You signal utility and create touchpoints.
• Be the answer to a small, persistent problem. Solve a recurring headache in the company and you become memorable — and advocate-worthy.
• Build your internal brand. Share frameworks, lightning decks, or a concise POV in internal forums. People who share useful models become nodes in the social graph.

For Hiring Leaders: Run Towards the Tension

If advocates drive most outcomes, your responsibility is to harness that force without letting it calcify inequity. That means pairing referral channels with active outreach, tracking where hires come from and who they displace, and investing in programs that cultivate advocates for underexposed talent pools.

When you treat advocacy as a lever — not a magic wand — you can use it to accelerate hiring and diversify outcomes simultaneously. The rule is simple: let relationships inform decisions, not decide them.

Final Word: Be Social, Strategically

We fetishize meritocracy because it sounds noble. But organizations are social machines. If you want to move through them, become part of the machine’s social architecture. That means deliberate generosity, sustained visibility and a focus on producing value that another person can fairly vouch for.

Seventy percent is a warning and an opportunity. For job seekers, it’s proof that skill without social currency is frequently insufficient. For companies, it’s a prompt to design systems that channel the practical efficiency of advocacy into more equitable outcomes. For both, the same practical ethic applies: give first, do the work, make it easy for someone to say yes.

In hiring, as in markets, the invisible hand is a networked one. Build it, widen it, and the jobs — and the quality of hires — will follow.

Action Checklist

• Identify 3 internal potential advocates and add value before asking for anything.
• Produce 1 small, visible deliverable relevant to your target team within 30 days.
• If you lead hiring: track referral outcomes by diversity and retention for the next 12 months.