Add the following books to your summer reading list. They’re the best Resources for Recruiting Success.
WEDDLE’s 2011/12 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 10th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind reference lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.
Making Job Boards Work
There’s a paradox in recruiting today. Two recent surveys confirmed the effectiveness of job boards in recruiting new hires. And at the very same time, there’s been a chorus of complaints that these sources produce too many candidates of too little quality. Can such a contraction be resolved? Absolutely. By shopping smart for job boards and then using them well.
The CareerXroads 2011 Source of Hire survey found that, after referrals, job boards were the #1 source of employers’ new hires. Employee referrals accounted for 27.5 percent of external hires and right behind it were job boards at 24.9 percent. The next highest source of new workers was the corporate career site at 18.8 percent.
The first quarter results of our 2011 Source of Employment survey here at WEDDLE’s also put job boards at #1. Better than four-out-of-ten of our respondents (40.7 percent), said that posting jobs on a commercial job board was the sourcing strategy that provides the best quality applicants. In second place was posting jobs on their own corporate career site, which was selected by 11.1 percent of the respondents.
Despite this clear success, however, there is no lack of criticism about job boards. Legions of conference speakers and bloggers lament what they describe as a “fire hose” or “tsunami” (take your pick) of unqualified candidates who clog up applicant tracking systems and waste recruiters time. If they are to be believed, for every recruiter who uses a job board successfully, there’s another one or two or three who don’t.
What causes this paradox to occur? No single source of talent can meet every employer’s every need, but job boards are effective if you know how to make them work. In other words, as with any other product or service, you have to be a smart consumer and a smart user to get the outcome you want.
Being a Smart Consumer of Job Boards
There are, by my count, over 100,000 job boards in operation today. They offer a wide range of features, services and fees. Some have been in business for a long time and some are all of 15 minutes old. Some provide access to a broad swath of the workforce, while others specialize in a profession, craft, trade, industry or affinity.
While there are many differences among all these job boards, however, one fact is true about all of them: No single job board can meet all of an organization’s staffing needs all of the time. For that reason, I suggest that you use a 6:1 sourcing strategy.
The 6:1 strategy looks like this: 2GP + 3N + 1D = 1GH, where:
This formula ensures that you probe the full range and depth of the talent population. Moreover, it stands up to scrutiny even by the CFO. Using the Saratoga Institute’s analysis, the cost of a vacant position is easily one times its salary and can range – depending on the importance of the job – up to ten or more times salary. The cost of those six job postings, therefore, pales quickly in the face of that kind of to that financial bleeding.
To use the 6:1 strategy effectively, however, you also have to know how to select the job boards that are most likely to provide the best candidates for your particular opening. I suggest that you consider the following criteria in making your evaluation:
and
Are there other criteria for evaluating a job board? Of course. For example, my 2011/12 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet provides over twenty types of information to describe the features, services and fees of the sites we feature. Regardless of which criteria you use, the key is to act like a seasoned consumer. Identify your alternatives, evaluate each using the same factors, and then patronize those that provide the best return on your investment of time and money.
Such smart consumerism, however, only gets you halfway to success. To realize that maximum return on investment, you also have to be a smart user of the sites you select. I’ll cover those best practices in my next newsletter.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
P.S. Please tell your coworkers and friends about WEDDLE’s Newsletter. They’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness, and so will we.
Get WEDDLE’s 2011/12 Guide Today
Called, the “Zagat of online recruiting.” by the American Staffing Association, WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet is the Gold Standard of guidebooks to the 100,000+ job boards, social media sites and career portals now operating on the Web.
In these challenging times, being a smart consumer of employment sites is a core competency of recruiters. Make sure you measure up.
Order your own copy and get a copy for each person on your team.
The Guide is available at Amazon.com or at Weddles.com.
The War for Talent is Morphing
If you read only one book this year, this should be it.
The Career Activist Republic is the most controversial, most provocative and the most honest book about America’s workplace you can find.
If you want to know:
this book will tell you.
Where can you get it?
But whatever you do, don’t delay! Order The Career Activist Republic today.
Be an “A” Level Recruiter
Recruiters have careers too. All too often, however, we devote most of our time and effort to helping others achieve their career goals.
That approach may have worked before the Great Recession. Today, it’s an invitation to career cardiac arrest … or what most of us call unemployment.
How can you protect yourself? Get a copy of Peter Weddle’s groundbreaking book, Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System. It introduces the only comprehensive regimen of activities designed to build up and then maintain your “career security.”
Click here to get a 24% discount on the book at Amazon.com!
Or, if you’d like A FREE WORK STRONG WRISTBAND to go along with the book, order it directly from WEDDLE’s by calling 203.964.1888 or clicking here.
Give yourself the advantage you deserve. Get Work Strong right away!