Last Thursday, I received a call from one of our hiring managers asking for an update on the status of a position she has open.
She had several questions: “How many candidates do we have?” “Are we running ads on XYZ site?” “What are we doing with the schools?”
My answers were pretty straight forward: “Two, no, and nothing.”
Initially she was shocked and even a little frustrated. However, I took the opportunity to explain to her that the three sources that she mentioned rarely show results for the kind of position that she’s trying to fill. Alternatively, what we are doing involved other avenues which have proven time and time again to produce high-quality candidates who typically matriculate into productive and loyal employees. The call ended with her being pleasantly surprised and assured that although it doesn’t move at lightning speed, our system works and it works consistently.
How do we find people for jobs? A better question might be, how do we get found by talented and dedicated people? Alternatively, how do talented and dedicated people look for and secure good jobs? The answers to these questions are contained herein. So, whether you’re a hiring manager or a job seeker, the following paragraphs will give you a glimpse into the matchmaking venues where job seekers unite with employers.
Four years ago, we undertook an examination of how our employees found their way to our payroll. We randomly selected 25 people and investigated how each one was introduced to TriMedx as a potential employer and subsequently how the initial contact was made between that person and someone here who lead them to an employment offer. If you’re reading this from the perspective of a job seeker, this should serve to help you apply your time and resources of the most productive methods of getting in front of potential employers. If you’re an employer, you might be wise to apply your time and resources with the hopes of securing the highest caliber of talent.
Of the 25 people we selected, only one person was the product of a third-party recruiter (a.k.a. “headhunter.”) Admittedly, our company occasionally uses third-party recruiters from time to time; we have relationships with about a dozen of them and I personally get about 1-2 resumes each week from this talent channel. Of the nearly 400 people we hired that year, we used headhunters fewer than 10 times.
We next identified six people who were discovered (and eventually hired) by having a resume published in a career database (AAMI, CMIA, CareerBuilder, etc …) Databases are fairly precise in what they deliver, but they are time consuming for the recruiter-user. They also have a price that is difficult to justify; annual user licenses are about $8,000 to $10,000 depending on the site. Niche sites are much lower but they also have talent pools that are much smaller.
Seven people came to us as a result of seeing an advertisement posted on a career site, LinkedIn, or any of the dozens of sites which are niche or are cross-posted from larger sites. The lesson here is, the good-ole-fashion “help wanted” sign still draws them in. But, there’s a catch to this one. We weren’t able to determine which advertisements were responsible for the original contact. In several cases, it was a specific job ad that drew a person in but when that person got hired, in many cases it was for a completely different job. What can be inferred is that advertisements produce hires but the connection is frequently indirect.
One person was hired as a result of a college job fair. This was someone who walked up to our table at his respective campus and nervously handed his resume to one of our recruiters. He was interviewed over the course of two weeks and went on to be hired into our manager-training program.
Ten people were hired through word-of-mouth referrals. This almost always proves to be the biggest bang for the buck. We do pay a referral incentive to our employees which certainly goes a long way at drumming up collective recruiting efforts across the enterprise. The simple fact is, word-of-mouth referred employees tend to be the most productive and they tend to remain in their jobs the longest. This metric is a little tricky in that the who-told-whom about a job is difficult to determine. Many of those conversations happen in private. Sometimes referral conversations happen between people who don’t work here; I interview someone who’s not a fit but he tells his buddy about the job who is a fit. His buddy goes to our career site and applies and we are never made aware that a word-of-mouth referral ever occurred. (Side note, there is only one casualty in word-of-mouth recruiting: the ego takes a slight bruise if the referred person doesn’t stay on long term, but that’s just how business works).
As you can see, there is more than one way for an individual to find a job or for a company to find an employee. It is important to take note of what works well and use it to your advantage. No process is perfect, but some have proven to work better than others. Don’t limit yourself to one approach, but do be mindful of which ones get the best results.