Referrals, In-house Job Sites Found to Generate Most New Hires

According to SilkRoad’s study on the effectiveness of recruitment marketing, and in confirmation of what many companies already know, the leading sources of new hires are referrals and a company’s career site. Combined, the two sources generated 40 percent of all hiring made in 2012. The survey involved 1,054 companies ranging in size from 100 employees up to over 10,000.

As in its inaugural study covering recruitment marketing in 2011, SilkRoad found that corporate job boards yielded the most interviews and hires over all other external sourcing efforts followed by Indeed.com then CareerBuilder. Internal sourcing such as walk-ins, internal transfers, and boomerangs, yielded 44 percent of interviews but 58 percent of overall hires. Referrals accounted for the most hires at 25.5 percent.

Of the external sources, Indeed was by far the dominant leader in number of interviews and lost out only to company websites in number of hires. Even second place CareerBuilder didn’t come close to Indeed in either category. Despite growing its number of interviews by nearly six times and its hires by three times, LinkedIn yielded lower numbers than CareerBuilder, Monster, and CraigsList. CraigsList surprised the industry by producing more hires than interviews, similar to the results of hourly-worker job board SnagaJob.