Monday, April 09, 2012

Finding New Hires in a Relatively Intuitive Place

We spend a lot of time talking about the different places that people go to apply to jobs from job sites such as Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com to help wanted ads in the newspaper or Craigslist to social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but the place that most new hires come from, according to Forbes, is from internal referrals and a company's own career site.
It turns out that job applications who come in through internal sources get the same number of interviews as ones from outside. However, internal sources, such as employee referrals, inside hires, walk-ins and a company’s career site, produce almost twice the number of hires as external ones, which include job search engines, job boards, print advertising, and job fairs.

“I think a lot of the findings will surprise people, while others will confirm what we’ve known all along,” says Thomas Boyle, director of product marketing at SilkRoad. “What you have to think about is that most companies try and foster internal mobility as part of their employee retention and alignment strategy. So, it’s not uncommon for employees to see and have the opportunity to apply or submit referrals for positions before they ever get released to the public.”
It's a bit surprising at first (especially since we're always thinking of the new and exciting ways that people get jobs, but the truth is that when you think about it more, it seems more intuitive that those who get hired are hired because they either sought out the company they really wanted to work for or because someone internal can vouch for that new employee.

In some ways, this is also a bit disappointing. We've come a long way from potential hires having to beat the pavement and show up at doors to get a job at a place that they don't know anyone at--and it really drives home the old adage that it really is all about who you know. But the truth is that companies are like people and when you bring in someone new, you want to feel like they really want you and you want to feel like you can trust them. Referrals and internal hires are exactly that.

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