[ecronant]

Practice can also give you this look up table of canned responses that makes you sound robotic.

People won't like your answer but I pretty much agree.

My career opportunities are what my friends can help me with because I don't have Terence Tao's CV to beat out the highly recommended candidate by the friend of the hiring manager. I think many really underestimate the high probability of being up against the hiring manager's friend of a friend and delusional in their own ability to beat that friend out. If someone is such a standout and genius they really shouldn't be giving advice to the average person anyway in this area.