Why You Need To Expand Your Job Search Outside Of Traditional Channels

By traditional channels I mean career sites, social networks such as LinkedIn or job boards. Whether you are looking for a job in a small organization or a large corporation, it is not unusual for firms to pay a referral fee to employees who will recommend the next hire.

This is a win-win-win situation: you get the job, the company quickly fills up an open vacancy, and your contact gets a bonus for the recommendation. All considered, it is the best way to get hired!

Actually Jobvite demonstrated that employee referrals are the most useful way of finding the best candidates for the job. The main reasons being:

• Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate – only 7% apply but this accounts for 40% of all hires.

• Applicants hired from a referral begin their position quicker than applicants found via job boards and career sites (after 29 days compared with 39 days via job boards and 55 via career sites).

• Referral hires have greater job satisfaction and stay longer at companies – 46% stay over 1 year, 45% over 2 years and 47% over 3 years.

• 67% of employers and recruiters said the recruiting process was shorter, and 51% said it was less to expensive to recruit via referrals, which explains why firms are increasingly setting up referral fee systems.

Do not be afraid to ask friends, relatives, and contacts to refer you to open positions where they work. As long as you have a logical and considerate application, most of people will likely help you out if they can!