Online Job Boards

Online job boards have surpassed traditional media as tools for hiring at small and mid-sized organizations, according to a recent study by the Inavero Institute for Service Research.

The survey included responses from hiring managers and human resource professionals on more than 1,000 hiring experiences across industries.

More than half of the respondents said they had used an online job board in the past year. But local newspapers still remain a leading recruiting tool, with 47 percent of hiring managers employing the medium during the same period.

Hiring managers use newspapers 75 percent of the time when recruiting hourly employees.

In contrast, 72 percent of salaried employee recruiting situations involved an online job board as part of their search strategy.

Local newspapers are used 55 percent of the time when recruiting blue-collar workers and lead to the most job hires, but referrals, a company's Web site and online job boards are also applied in many blue-collar hiring situations.

Online job boards are utilized in 40 percent of recruiting situations involving blue-collar positions.

The main tool used to recruit white-collar, full-time jobs is online job boards, helping 68 percent of hiring managers locate prospective employees. Referrals and the company's Web site were also often managed to fill these positions.

Positions with annual salary levels of $60,000 or higher require significantly more time to fill than lower salary positions. More than 20 percent of positions at that level require eight weeks or more to fill, compared to only 9 percent when the position offers a salary of less than $60,000.

Industry and regional job fairs led to the highest number of candidates interviewed, averaging 5.2 interviews per situation when they were included in a candidate search.

But only 4 percent of recruiters eventually hired the candidates from the industry/job fair while 12 percent of the hires were generated through online job boards.