So why are so many career site owners still not maximising on this opportunity?

A respected peer technology company and one of the US's top online recruitment marketing solution providers, Jobs2Web, have recently published some very interesting data regarding their client base. This data relates to the success ratios of the various sourcing channels their clients use to direct hire in to the company.

From the analysis of their clients, recruiters needed to review and select from 219 CV's / online applications per job when using major job boards, the likes of Monster or CareerBuilder to find a successful hires but only needed 116 applications from social media channels and 33 from the company's own career site to get a successful hire. They have also stated that if a job seeker runs a job search query in Google or other major search engines, the ratio is 32 to 1.

So what can we make of these numbers, well; these are my thoughts?

• The ratio for organic job searching using Google and others, if you have not realised it before now, is both a massively important source of talent for your business but it is also an efficient one that can help you find the most suitable applicants; but only If you apply the correct web optimisation strategies.
• The data also appears to confirm the randomness of the job board visitor applying to yours and multiple other jobs that they think are good for them. Though they may have skills their job seeking motivation can be about needing to find work and maybe not so much finding the ideal job and career. The larger ratio of 219 to 1 from job boards' result in more time spent de-selecting applicants who are not exactly right for the job so cost of hire will be inflated.
• The data for social media is also interesting; is this ratio based on the direct attraction marketing of live jobs to active job seekers or is it also including the lighter engaging communications to the passive candidate types? Is this ‘apply' response then actually going to the career site's job apply page?
• The data mentioned about job seekers coming from a company career site (form the post I reviewed by Joe Light from the Career Strategies section of the Wall Street Journal) said the ratio of a successful hires was 33 to 1. This may need deeper analysis as I see the career site as the talent hub of the online experience and not a pure source channel. Not like job board advertising - social media marketing and Recruitment SEO for search engines.
• These channels in reality should end up at the career site then when they get there move on into the employer brand experience from there. Now, if the analysis confirms that 33 number is from other areas and not any of the other three (Search query, job board advert or social media posting) then this is a cool stat. Especially if its success can be linked to both internal and external job referral channels as this is still viewed as the most effective ratio, with analysis from many quarters fixing the ratio in the 10 to 1 area.
• What we do know from other studies and my own ranting on the subject; imagine how much better that cost of hire would improve if the career site fully stood up to the challenge of the candidate visitor experience and visitor engagement of all the ideal visitor types (mobile career site anyone?) . The ratio would get smaller, the volume of visitors (of the right type) would increase and so employer brand and time to hire would also improve.
• As it stands and despite the overall effectiveness the above analysis, Job Board advertising by business still accounts for approximately 25% of external hires (from a study in Jan 2012 by CareerXroads).

For your reference, the Jobs2web analysis included 1.3 million applications and 26,000 hires in 2010.

Author: Martin Shaw

For more information, please contact martin by email or call him on 07791 673 715

About RecruitSmart Technology

Founded by Martin in 2012, RecruitSmart is a company focused on applying any combination of technology, on and off line marketing and communications and all their years of recruitment industry expertise to support a company's talent attraction, acquisition and management strategies.