Annual Sources of Hire Survey
Where Corporations Find & Hire Their Employees
“CareerXroads’ (CXR) fourth annual “Sources of Hire” whitepaper attempts to open a window on how some of America’s most competitive corporations fill their positions.”
Laurie’s Comments:
Want to know where to invest your time and energy in your employment search? This annual survey reveals interesting statistics regarding where companies actually find candidates who are hired. Notice that we are not referring to the locations from which the bulk of the resumes received originate, but rather to how contact was initially made with those who ultimately landed a position with the company.
Important findings of the 2004 study include:
– 38% of all open positions were filled by Internal Transfers and Promotion.
– 61% of all External Hires originated from just two ‘Channels’- Employee Referrals & the Internet. (31.7% Employee Referrals; 29.6% Internet)
– Traditional forms of recruiting are under pressure from the Internet and expanding use of referral networks.
– 3 online job boards (Monster.com, CareerBuilder and HotJobs) accounted for 22.8% of all hires attributed to the Internet, 53.3% were from the company’s website, and 16.9% were from niche sites.
These data confirm that networking remains a key component of successful employment search. This fact is corroborated specifically for the executive candidate by an ExecuNet survey of 952 executives conducted at approximately the same time as the above survey. ExecuNet’s survey found that “networking is the largest single source of their interviews, with 31 percent of interviews in their job searches attributed to networking.”
The data in CareerXRoads’ study also confirm that the Internet’s role as an employment resource is growing. Clearly, posting your executive resume online and monitoring job postings (particularly corporate websites) are valuable tools in your employment search arsenal.
Note, however, from the ExecuNet survey mentioned above, that “twenty percent of their interviews came from responding to Internet job postings, although only 9 percent of their jobs came from Internet postings.” (This bears further analysis.) Note also that for the executive, niche boards and membership sites such as ExecuNet seem to account for a larger proportion of good leads than do the mega job boards.
I will be watching for 2005 study statistics as soon as they are available and will keep my readers informed on emerging trends. Meanwhile, work that network aggressively, post your executive resume judiciously, and mine those job boards and corporate sites!