[edwhitesell]

Not only that, some organizations have policies to not accept information/applicants who don't follow the process through recruiter, HR, job board, etc. Now you're effectively "black balled" from applying the right way.

[dghlsakjg]

Are there orgs that will blackball you for contacting someone?

I've just seen that they will tell you that if you are interested to apply on the ATS.

[dloku]

As far as I know, referrals are way more preferred that cold applications.

Same with good applications which aren't filtered out by these very same organizations lol