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By Susan M. Heathfield, About.com Guide to Human Resources since 2000

Recruiting Online: Score the Most Hires

Wednesday August 30, 2006
Having done a lot of recruiting in recent years, I had wondered how many applicants were typically arriving at the company from the various sources we used for recruiting. My sense of it was that more and more applicants were coming from online recruiting and fewer every year from sources such as newspaper classifieds. The following study findings from the DirectEmployers Association, a non-profit consortium of over 200 U.S. employers, in a study conducted with the assistance of Booz Allen Hamilton, shows the Internet is now the primary hiring source for employers.

"The study of hiring practices at leading U.S. companies revealed that Internet sources produced 51% of all hires in 2005 with the largest source of hires being the employers' own corporate web sites, while newspaper classified advertisements were the source of only 5% of the new hires.

"According to the study, individual percentages of new hires for each Internet source are: Corporate Employment Web Sites: 21%; General Job Boards: 15%; Niche Job Boards: 6%; Social Network Web Sites: 5%; and Commercial Resume Databases: 4%.

"Employers reported that they find the highest quality candidates and receive the highest return on their investment from their own corporate web sites and from employee referrals. Financially, while General Job Boards represent the highest recruitment spending category for corporations, capturing 27% of the recruiting advertising budget, employers in this study reported that such Boards generated only 15% of new hires in 2005."

Thanks to About's Alison Doyle at Job Searching for drawing my attention to these results.

More Information About Recruiting Online

Comments

August 31, 2006 at 2:43 pm
(1) Dana Northrup says:

I have obtained my last 3 positions via the internet. I think that with internet hiring, you don’t get so much a better applicant, as an applicant that is a better fit with your organization and the position. Classified ads have recently gotten so abbreviated that over half the time, you don’t really know what kind of position you are applying for. With the internet, you can communicate so much more information, that the applicant can be sure they are applying for a position they really want.

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