Shortly before graduating from Georgia Tech in '03 I began attending every campus job fair and sending out my resume through MonsterTrak. I ended up getting a few interviews through both these avenues however this is not how I ended up getting my first engineering job out of college. In addition to taking these conventional routes I contacted the members of the Peachtree Regional committee and board and several other FIRST engineers I was working with or had worked with in the past. The recommendations that I received allowed me several final interview opportunities without having to go through the entire process.
The offer that I accepted came as a result of a fellow regional board member recommending me to the former CEO of Mapics who sits on the board of directors of the company that I now work for (Qcept Technologies). They invited me for an interview which lasted about 3 hours including lunch. A few days later I received an offer. I found out about a year later that they had decided that they wanted me not long after the interview ended, but I guess they wanted to make me sweat
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So is it who you know, what you know, or who knows what you know? In my opinion it's all three. Who you know and who knows what you know gets you in the door and what you know keeps you there.