Online Recruiting - How effective is it?

Especially for a generation of executives and managers who were operating comfortably before the internet even existed.The internet is at the same time transparent and mysterious, and for that reason, it scares people. This ora of fear is slowly being eroded, as we as a soceity become more and more dependent on technology each and every day.

The internet is revolutionalizing recruiting, yet many remain skeptical about using the internet to recruit talent. This issue is an important one considering the financial limitations being placed on staffing budgets. Here is some commentary that may turn skeptics into believers:

Weddle's Research embarked on a project set to find out not "if the internet delivers, but rather how well it does so." Here is what they found:

The responses below were collected between March 10 and June 20, 2007 for the following question: "How would you rate the caliber of your new hires sourced online?"

• 31.3% said they were among their best employees
• 47.9% said they were above average employees
• 16.7% said they were average employees
• 2.1% said they were below average employees
• 2.0% had no opinion

The only recruting method that recieved higher marks was Employee Referral Programs.

Referrals work so well for two reasons:

1. They tap into the passive talent pool of "career activists," capitalizing on the immense amount of successful employees passively wondering if there is something just a little bit better.
2. Friends, coworkers, and family are the people best qualified to refer a candidate for a job that would work for him/her. Who knows you better than your friends, colleagues and family? So it would only make sense that these people would know best what job would work out best for both you and your employer.

There are problems with private referrals however.

1. They have limited outreach! Internal Employee Referral Programs are limited to the connections of your employee base. Surely there are thousands of qualified candidates that aren't in "the loop."
2. These pools tend to run dry as you narrow your recruiting lense by overlooking countless potential candidates. The best and the brightest are out there, you just have to look harder for them.

The internet is no perfect solution either. The cost of internet recruiting is higher than it appears at first glance: In addition to the posting costs on job boards and subscription fees of other services, successfull internet recruiting demands expertise and technological savvy. Because the technology available to recruiters is constantly evolving, a serious, time intensive effort is required to remain on the cutting edge.

Considering the findings above, it is clear that the absolute best way to recruit would be to combine the time trusted method of referrals with the communicative power of the internet without having to allocate an immense amount of time and effort. This may seem impossible, but considering the aforementioned rapid evolultion of recruiting technologies this hope is not that far-fetched.

In fact, there already are some services available on the internet that have begun to embrace this concept. Yellojobs.com is one such site which understands the vital importance of winning the War for Talent, and seeks to make this dream of recruiting efficiency a reality.