Spend Less Time on Monster, More on FaceBook

Founders Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXRoads just released their 8th annual Source of Hire Study, subtitled "What Happened in 2008 and What It Means for 2009".

You can certainly read the whole 29 page survey of 45 large (5000+ employee) firms who employed 1,863 recruiters and filled 309,600 openings in 2008. I just want to point out a couple of important trends this study uncovered that you should be aware of:

Internal transfers and promotions make up 38.8% of all full time positions filled.

Referrals make up 27.3 of all external hires.

Job Boards make up 12.3% of all external hires.

This only confirms what we've known: the job boards have not grown much as a source of new hires, holding steady for years at around only 12% of total hires.

Here's what should be disconcerting if you're hanging out too long at the Monsters and CareerBuilders, and other job boards though:

The most visible trend they found is the "pressure to reduce hires and associated costs attributed to third-party recruiters, newspapers and traditional job boards. A steady growth of sourcing tactics especially social networks and search engine marketing is also evident."

This is all the more reason to develop less of a reliance on the Monsters, Hotjobs, CareerBuilders, Ladders, et al, job postings for your job search food.

Widen your diet (to extend the metaphor). Put more emphasis on social networking sites. Especially start with your LinkedIn and Facebook time. Give it some time and you should start to see some new results in your job search.

By the way, check out my latest radio show where I share some great tips from Jason Alba of JibberJobber and Guy Kawasaki on how you can make more effective use of both LinkedIn and Facebook.

Joe