There are plenty of jobs in banking that don’t require much beyond the ability to get a BA in whatever and a personality that tends to follow the rules.
Even in tech jobs, the narrow scope of jobs for compliance reasons enables all sorts of wacky. I had a buddy who basically performed a single task related to zoning SAN volumes and made an obscene salary for doing so.
GPA correlates to a personality that the function in the bureaucracy.
step one is don't feel bad. it really is a numbers game. some of the companies you're applying to don't actually want to hire anyone for the position right now. some of them are desperate to get anyone with a pulse yesterday. it's all about timing, but you don't usually have a way of knowing when the time is right.
just keep rolling the dice; you'll get a bite eventually. I got an internship that lead to my first full-time job when I had a 2.4 GPA. I just happened to have experience with relevant tech that was rare in the area and they gave me a shot.
So while what you say is true, my potential network is necessarily limited. Working in retail, I still met plenty of people who wouldn't even let me assist them because of my race. I think this may go beyond personal qualities.
It felt like most other people had the same view. That is also why personal networks could be used to differentiate. I don't know what it looks like now though, or if there is more concern about just reproducing what people already look like by tapping into personal networks.
