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Effectiveness of Recruiting Tools/Techniques

By Kathy Barton, March 26, 2008

It seems like every day you hear about a new recruiting tool or technique. The question is how many of them are really being used by recruiters? And more importantly, how many of them are effective? We asked that question on the Adler Group's Recruiting and Hiring Challenges Survey of 2008 to try to get some sense of how recruiters rate the tools and techniques they are using. The actual question was, “On a 1-5 scale (5 is best) how would you rank the effectiveness of these recruiting tools?” A rating of 3 means pretty effective, 4 means animportant resource, and 5 means an invaluable tool. In analyzing the results, a tool needs a rating of 3 or higher to be considered effective.

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The results say a lot about what is being used, and about the large number of tools that haven't even been tried by most recruiters. The highest rated tools/techniques go back to basics. The three techniques that received the highest ratings have been around since the earliest days of recruiting. 69% of the respondents thought

Networking with Passive Candidates was an effective technique, 66% thought Employee Referral Programs were effective, and 65% rated Internal Employee Pools as effective. These techniques also had the highest level of enthusiasm, based on the number of people who rated them an invaluable resource. While this comes as no surprise, what's interesting about this is that, although Networking with Passive Candidates was found to be the single most effective technique a recruiter can use, elsewhere in the survey 44% of recruiters stated they either needed some improvement in this area, or felt that they were only good enough given certain circumstances. Also, 48% of recruiters felt that Getting Voicemails Returned from Passive Candidates was either a growing or a huge problem. So while Networking with Passive candidates is a critical technique, almost half of recruiters feel that their execution falls short in this area.

Top rated tools also reflect the technologies which have changed the way candidates look for jobs. 66% of recruiters felt that Niche Job Boards were effective, and 62% found the Major Job Boards effective. This is despite the fact that 63% of respondents also said that the quantity and quality of candidates from the Major Job Boards is dropping. Clearly, although the effectiveness of the major job boards is declining, it is still more effective than many of the tools available on the market. Not more effective than your own Company Career Website, however, which tied with the Major Job Boards with an effectiveness rating of 62%. Internal Resume Databases were rated as effective by 55% of respondents. This slightly lower score probably reflects the fact that many recruiters either don't like the search technology used by their internal applicant tracking system, or they don't know how to use it.

Although Indeed.com, a job aggregator, is the fourth largest job board by size and traffic, many recruiters aren't aware of its reach. Only 50% of respondents have used aggregators such as Indeed and Simply Hired, compared to 96% that have used the Major Job Boards. If you look at the percentage of people who have tried both, however, 24% find the Major Job Boards “just adequate” compared to 12% for the aggregators. Companies who are unhappy with the quantity and quality of the candidates coming from the Major Job Boards should try using the aggregators if they haven't already done so. In addition, the Adler Group strongly suggests that companies reverse engineer their ads to find the best job boards for their region and class of jobs. 28% of recruiters find this to be an effective technique, a fairly high rating given that only 57% are using this tool.

Passive Candidate Name Generation Techniques were rated effective by 54% of recruiters. LinkedIn is more widely used than ZoomInfo: 44% of respondents have never used ZoomInfo, compared to 20% for LinkedIn. The smaller user base is reflected in the effectiveness ratings: 49% of recruiters found LinkedIn effective compare to 27% for ZoomInfo. The impact of market share skews the effectiveness rating, as shown by the number of respondents that had tried the products but found them either not too good or just adequate, which were almost identical. ZoomInfo was thought to be just adequate or not too good by 29% of respondents, compared to 31% for LinkedIn. The effectiveness rating of the automated tools from AIRS suffers from a similar problem: 59% of respondents have never tried it, which makes an effectiveness rating of 18% better than it seems.

The use of compelling messages and aggressive advertising is considered effective by 54% of the respondents. In another interesting disconnect, only 28% of companies in the survey regularly track the quality of candidates by sourcing channel, which means that half of the people who believe advertising is effective aren't measuring the quality of the candidates that are attracted by it. While anecdotal evidence can be powerful, metrics are what get budgets approved. Since recruitment advertising is expensive, tracking its effectiveness is essential.

While social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, and Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and building social networks have received a lot of press lately, only 55 to 60% of recruiters have tried them. However, for those that have, blogs and building social networks are considered almost twice as effective. Or perhaps to be more accurate, they are considered to be less ineffective. FaceBook and MySpace were considered not good or barely adequate tools by 39% of recruiters, while only 24% were disillusioned with blogs and social networking. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has been tried by a similar number of companies, with just 19% finding them ineffective.

Recruiting is a competitive business. Every company wants to hire the very best talent. Since top talent is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, the ability to leverage the tools and techniques that are available on the market, and do it better and faster than the competition, is critical. Once a tool is so proven that everyone is using it, it ceases to be a competitive advantage. Taking the time to test and master new recruiting tools and techniques before your competition is a potential advantage you don't want to pass up.