Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/131821
Recruitment Figure 5 The Top 10 Findings For all of 2012, the data included more than 10 million applicants, more than 300,000 interviews, and in excess of 150,000 hires. From that, we culled the top findings. 1. SilkRoad clients determined that interviews and hires are the most important metrics they use in determining source effectiveness. 2. External sources provided the majority of interviews (56 percent) as opposed to internal sources, which provided 44 percent. 3. Internal sources produced more hires (58 percent) compared to external sources (42 percent). Branded job boards. According to Bersin & Associates 2011 Factbook, talent acquisition spending in the U.S. alone grew between 2010 and 2011 to nearly $3,500 per new hire, with most dollars going to job boards and search agencies. Customer data regarding branded job boards showed that there is great disparities in their effectiveness. Of the top 10 branded job boards. CareerBuilder clearly provided the largest number of interviews and hires (see Figure 5). Compared to Monster, the second largest source, it yielded approximately 127 percent more interviews and hires. 4. Among external sources, online sources were clearly more effective. They accounted for 87 percent of interviews and 80 percent of hires. 5. Indeed is the leading external source of interviews and hires. It provided almost double the number of hires and almost two and a half times more interviews than the next largest source, which was Career Builder. LinkedIn, the professional job networking site, showed dramatic increases in numbers in this year's report, compared to last year. Linkedln accounted for nearly six times as many interviews and three times as many hires as it did last year. (While it is common knowledge that roughly 70 percent of all jobs are filled through some sort of networking, this impressive rise may be attributed to an increase in passive job seekers and the overall usage of Linkedln in the SilkRoad customer base.) 6. Of all internal recruitment marketing sources, referrals remain the strongest source for hires (44 percent). Internal hires followed at 26 percent. 7. Of internal recruitment sources, referrals and company career sites effectively tied for number of sourced interviews at 36 percent. Sourcing strategy should not be frozen in time: It should shift with changes in an organization—mergers or acquisitions and new product development—and with the emergence of new sources and technologies in the marketplace. For example, in conversations with customers, SilkRoad has found that professionals are constantly weighing the efficiency of spending on offline sources against the wealth of free social media sources that are now available—a dilemma not as notable 10 years ago. The answer to some of these complex issues is found in source data. That's why organizations must review this data regularly and adjust their marketing strategy to continue producing an acceptable ROI. 8. Of the online sources, Indeed provided the largest percentage of interviews (27 percent) and company career sites accounted for the largest number of hires (30 percent). Findings indicate that company career sites are a crucial part of the recruitment marketing mix. 9. At first glance, it appears as if job boards outperform job search engines in this study. Job boards produced 54 percent of external interviews, as compared to job search engines, which produced 33 percent of interviews. Job boards provided 56 percent of hires, whereas job search engines provided 24 percent. However, this finding must be tempered: There were dozens of job boards in the study versus only two job search engines. Indeed and Simply Hired account for a disproportionate amount of recruitment activity: 38 percent of external online interviews and 29 percent of external online hires. Considering the small number of job search engines in the study, the numbers accounted for by engines are impressive. 10. CareerBuilder was the leading source of interviews and hires among job boards, providing 127 percent more interviews and hires than the next largest source. Still, even with hard data available, many organizations delay or fail to adjust their strategy. They are wedded to past ways of sourcing candidates, loyal to a specific agency or source, overestimate the brand strength of a source, or are not confident in the hard data that is collected. Executives must be crystal-clear realists who can understand hard data, determine its impact on the company, and communicate it through all parts of the business, especially to the C-suite. Only then will they realize the ROI in recruitment marketing dollars that companies expect. Tom Boyle is SilkRoad's director of product marketing. SilkRoad's 2013 Recruitment Marketing Effectiveness: Meaningful Metrics Straight from the Source can be found at http://pages.silkroad.com/rs/silkroad/ images/Recruitment-Marketing-Effectiveness-2013.pdf [54] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | APRIL 2013