That may be true for a small company, but any org with a standardized interview process will still likely put you through the whole interview loop. Best you'll get out of your call/coffee is a referral, and many places don't even place much weight on referrals either.
Every org has an internal referral process, and referrals get to the front of the queue. This is true both at a no name startup and Google.
A referral from a trusted internal employee is what you leverage your network for. After that, you still go through interviews but you're at the head of the pack and already have a relationship internally through the person who referred you. All that should be left is process to check the boxes in the HR system and salary negotiation. There could always be exceptions like failing a background check or like getting too abrasive in social media and HR thinking you could present reputational risk etc.
I think there are some rules around hiring for public cos in the US too -- even if you they like you over coffee, they've still got to post the position and interview other candidates too (that's been my experience semi-recently anyway, but it's possible that some of those rules are imposed by the industries that some of those companies serve, hard to tell). Some large private companies have also clamped down on that to avoid nepotism in the form of a manager bulk hiring all of their team from another role without interviewing anyone else.