Surprising Results of Sources of Employment Survey

I will bet that by now most of my clients are sick of hearing how important networking is to successful job search and career management, and really wish that surfing the job boards, posting their resumes online, and sending unsolicited resumes to recruiters will magically produce that next ideal job. Most research clearly indicates that this is not a good strategy.

A recent e-newsletter published by Weddle’s reporting the results of their annual Source of Employment Survey might seem to contradict the conventional wisdom. This survey polled people actually engaged in job search to relate their experiences, in particular regarding where they had found their last job and where they expected to find the next. It was not a small sample, with more than 11,700 responses received between January and August of this year.

Survey results indicated a disconnect between what career experts see as the reality of the job search marketplace and the way job seekers actually approach it. Results showed that most candidates are using “traditional” job search strategies such as job fairs, newspaper and online job postings, and companies’ website career pages. However, despite the fact that career experts nearly unanimously say that networking is by far the most effective way to land your next position, only one out of 10 of those surveyed said they found their last job in this manner??!!

Does this indicate that the career experts are wrong, or does it simply indicate that most of us are searching very inefficiently and taking longer to find that next job than is necessary? I tend to think it is the latter. Since most jobs are never advertised (the so-called “hidden job market”) and thus most candidates will never hear about them (meaning less competition for those jobs), it seems logical that your odds of winning an offer through networking would be much higher than with pursuing advertised positions, which can generate hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Clearly, executive level candidates seem to land new positions primarily through networking, and job boards are not particularly effective for them. But how will the statistics on source of employment play out across the general population if how long the search lasted is factored in to the survey? From strong anecdotal evidence and a growing body of research, I suspect that those who actively build and leverage a network enjoy a more productive, shorter search.

Posted by Laurie Smith

Comments

[Patricia]

I wonder if they could correlate job hunt success/mode of search to type of job searching for? For example, traditional search would work well (I think, I could be wrong?) for clerical or sales positions. Whereas a position as a researcher could be achieved through networking.

[Julie O'Malley]

I think a lot of the disconnect might be in a misunderstanding of the term "networking." I bet if you asked a sampling of people if they "network," they'd say no. Yet if you asked that same group of people how they got their last job, many of them would say they heard about the job from their brother-in-law, or they went to work for someone they used to see at industry trade shows. You or I might define that as networking, but the individuals might not be recognizing it as such.