Advertise a job online: Effectiveness of job boards vs social media [infographic]

eQuest Big Data Analytics division released an infographic that reveals some really juicy details about from where employers are actually getting their hires. To advertise a job online, employers should consider real data about the effectiveness of their hiring sources. Contrary to the advice being dispensed left-and-right by some self-serving consultants, employers hire far, far more candidates from job boards than they do from social media sites.

eQuest’s study shows that only 2.9 percent of external hires come from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media activity. That’s less than one-sixth of the percentage of the 18 percent that employers are getting from job boards. To be clear, CollegeRecruiter.com and eQuest are both on the same page in that even though there is a huge disparity in these numbers, employers should not abandon their social media efforts nor should they throw all of their eggs into the job board basket. Instead, employers need to target the right channels for the job posting, whether that be a job board such as CollegeRecruiter.com, a social media site such as LinkedIn, or both.

“It’s important to not get lured into accepting anecdotes as fact or get blinded by bias when determining the marketing channels that work for you,” said David Bernstein, vice president of eQuest’s Big Data Analytics Division. “When one in six hires comes via a job board, it’s dangerous to let the herd mentality guide decision-making instead of the data. Talent acquisition pros need to get their recruitment marketing messages in front of their target job seeker audience, period. Any channel that provides this opportunity should be included in the marketing mix, and our infographic’s statistics show that job boards fill that bill.”

The infographic below is a companion to eQuest’s white paper, “Setting the Record Straight.”