The most important characteristic of students who land the internships and jobs they want is proactivity. Students who take initiative to strategically network with professionals are the most likely to succeed.

See, most students are reactive: they respond to the opportunities put in front of them. They spend most of their time anonymously applying to jobs online. Maybe they show up at a career fair or speaker event. Unfortunately, these activities won’t differentiate them from the thousands of other students seeking similar opportunities. If your job search strategy is to react to the opportunities easily accessible, you’re missing an enormous opportunity.

Proactive job searching, on the other hand, allows you to access jobs of all types—including jobs that aren’t even posted online. The key to proactive job searching is taking action to create professional relationships and conduct informational interviews. This way, when you are looking for an internship, you can contact people in your network to learn about new opportunities, ask for advice, or even land a position. As the saying goes, “dig your well before you are thirsty.” By building your network throughout your college career and your life, you will have a well of opportunities available through your connections.

There’s nothing wrong with applying to jobs online or going through traditional interview processes, but you should pair this approach with proactive networking to raise your odds of getting an interview. People generally hire people they know, so you need to be known to have the best shot of getting hired.

Let’s imagine an internship hiring manager with two stacks of resumes on her desk. One stack contains 100 resumes from students who anonymously applied online. The other stack contains just five resumes from students who were recommended by current employees. Which stack would you tackle first? The students with personal recommendations are far more likely to be hired. And asking the right series of questions while conducting informational interviews is the best way to get a recommendation.

It’s important to remember that even with proactive networking, you won’t have a 100% success rate. Some of your emails won’t get responses, even when you follow up. Some of your job applications won’t lead to an interview. Some professionals will be too busy to meet with you. You need to embrace failure and stay persistent even when it seems like nothing is working. Over time, your proactive networking will pay off, and professionals will want to meet with you.

In the words of leadership expert Stephen Covey, “Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or condition. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.”

Being proactive ultimately comes down to being the driver, not the passenger, in your career journey. You and your family have likely put a lot of time, effort, and money into your college education, so you owe it to yourself to seek out a career that will make you fulfilled. The best way to landing a career like this is through proactive networking. Good luck and get started!