About the Respondents

Our respondents hold a broad cross-section of positions (from recruiters and a few hiring managers to vice presidents), in a wide range of company size and industries. Total recruitment advertising budgets ranged to a high of more than a million dollars. The majority of respondents control budgets exceeding $50,000. Several dozen industries were represented with the largest numbers coming from banking and finance, IT and related consulting, healthcare, retail, biotech and engineering.

Respondents based their opinions on value, telling us that the number of hires made compared to the cost was the most important criterion in determining effectiveness. They also took into account the number of offers generated and the quality of the candidates in relation to the amount spent. Using that yardstick to decide effectiveness, respondents told us:

• Print is an ineffective medium for recruiting candidates. It received the lowest effectiveness rating of all the advertising methods we surveyed. Almost 60 percent of respondents rated print "ineffective" or "very ineffective." Only 13 percent of respondents, the lowest of any category, said they expected to increase their print spending.
• Job sites generally rated well with nearly 50 percent of respondents calling them "effective" or "very effective." Some respondents said they make over 50 percent of annual hires from online job sites.
• Niche job sites and national boards are more effective than others; diversity sites, for example, received low marks. In fact, diversity job sites was the only category we surveyed that did not receive a single vote as being a "very effective" means of recruiting.
• Fewer than 2 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use online job boards, and only 8 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use print media; on the other hand, over 40 percent indicate that they do not use social networking sites. Fifteen percent said they did not use career fairs to recruit, and 12 percent said that they did not use employee referral programs.
• Career fairs, while not seen as a particularly good value, have their supporters. Survey comments indicated that many see career fairs as a branding tool and as a way to quickly hire large numbers of workers.
• Respondents appear ambivalent about the effectiveness of social networking sites, and at present, a majority of them spend less than $25,000 annually advertising on such sites. However, respondents said they would increase rather than decrease spending.
• Ninety percent of survey respondents said their organization had a corporate career site.
• Over 60 percent of respondents said they used an applicant tracking system to capture recruiting data on candidates. The most commonly tracked metric was the number of hires; after that, in order of most common, was the number of offers extended, the number of candidates that applied for a position, the number of interviews generated, and the number of resumes received. Survey respondents indicated processing about 1,000 resumes a month against about 50 open requisitions monthly.

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