With candidate sourcing, like many other areas of hiring and recruiting, you can't go off of hunches and guesses as to determine the best and most prolific sources for your candidates. We previously covered seven incredible stats about candidate sourcing, but with 2013 coming to a close and with recruiting processes under evaluation for the coming year, it's prudent to take a few more statistics under advisement as your company makes its hiring and recruiting decisions. Here are MORE incredible stats about candidate sourcing:
Nearly 1/2 of All Companies Make at Least 1 Hire for Every 5 Referrals
"When we look at employee referrals... how many of the candidates who came in that were interviewed from somebody who either an employee or who saw the ad out there," said Ray Rike, chief operating officer at Accolo. "We measure both and we recommend everyone to measure [both]"
It's not a bad recommendation, as on average, about 20% of your referral hires will come from those who see the ad and not an employee. Referrals are a great source for top hires. That's not a secret. But, what may be a secret is that referral hires stay 2.5 times longer than a non-referral hire, and often perform between 15% and 58% better, depending on the industry and type of position. What's also more of a secret is how to leverage employee referral programs to find more of these candidates.
"We would recommend... how are you programmatically and systematically leveraging employees social connections to identify potential candidates," Rike asked. "It's something that should be built into every recruiting process."
The Average Person on LinkedIn has 168 Connections
Leveraging your employees social connections means more than asking them to send you great candidates, but also doing a little bit of legwork in finding these people. After all, your employees may not know their social connections are looking or would be qualified for an open position. Here's how to leverage those 168 connections on LinkedIn:
- If your company has 10 employees, and you ask your 10 employees to share a job posting on LinkedIn, then you automatically reach 1680 potential referral candidates (168 connections x 10 employees)
- If only 10% of the 1680 original possibilities share the job ad with their network, then your number of potential referrals is about 28,000
- The number of potential referrals skyrockets to 282,240 if 100% of those 1680 possibilities share the ad
"The numbers are compelling from a network effect perspective," Rike said. "Don't just have your employees share it with their network activity on LinkedIn. But, share it in the groups they belong to, especially the alumni groups. The more relevant the location you're sharing that job, the better."
About 50% of online candidates won't finish the application if the process is too long and/or frustrating
For an application that's too long or frustrating, the drop off rate can be as high as 80%. It's critical that the application process is as candidate friendly as possible because your company will lose those great hires simply because they dropped off for one reason or another. Even though making the application short and simple would be a vast improvement, it's not the only website functionality that could drive away a great hire. Here are some of the other complaints that could prevent a candidate from applying or from finishing the application:
- Vague job descriptions - 45%
- Application took too much time - 35%
- Inadequate information about company/job opening - 32%
- No organized career site - 28%
- Website poorly designed - 25%
- Too many jobs and no way to filter them - 17%
"If you're posting your jobs on LinkedIn, and you're using LinkedIn Recruiter where the candidate can apply using their LinkedIn profile, then you should know that LinkedIn is showing that candidate three to five competing job openings." Rike said. "The job descriptions need to be relevant and, more importantly, aspirationally oriented for that candidate."
Rike also says that these problems and percentages indicate that many companies aren't investing enough into their corporate presence on LinkedIn and in their employment brand on their own corporate site. The company career page should be driving between 15% and 20% of your hires, so if it's not, then it would behoove you to look at your own career platform as a candidate source and how it can be better optimized. This is marketing 101, so if you need help in this area, start by asking your marketing team for advice.
Use the Signal to Noise Metric
We've already done an entire article about how to calculate the signal to noise metric, so, we're not going to go into too much detail about it. But, if you're not sure where to start in terms of your candidate sourcing, use this metric to figure out your best sources. From there, focus on those channels that have the biggest signal to noise ratio (i.e. the sources that offer the highest percentage of hires based on the number that find the job through that source).
If these incredible stats have changed how you think about your current sources of hire, then you need to view this webinar:
"Amazing Charts & Stats About Candidate Sources for 2013."
The 60-minute webinar features interesting hiring stats about job board performance including CareerBuilder, Craig's List, DICE, Indeed, Job Central, (The) Ladders, Monster, Simply Hired as well as compelling hiring stats about social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Access the webinar now.
