SHRM Study Shows Direct Link Between .Jobs and Positive Outcomes in Recruiting

SHRM Study Sheds Light on New HR Recruitment Techniques

So what's in your MySpace profile?

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Respondents from high- tech organizations and organizations with large staff were more likely to have a ".jobs" domain, according to a recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

The 2007 Advances in E-Recruiting: Leveraging the .jobs Domain survey, queried HR professionals on the differences between organizations that utilize a ".jobs" domain compared to companies without such domains, shedding considerable light on new online search techniques used by recruiters. The Internet is used by most organizations as their primary method for recruiting.

The three most commonly reported techniques or strategies used by respondents from all organizations to engage passive job candidates were:

(1) viewing membership directories for associations and trade groups

(2) Scanning social networking sites; and (3) mining industry-specific blogs, discussion forums, newsgroups or listservs.

"The Internet has opened up a whole new set of opportunities through which HR recruiters can and are creatively sifting," said SHRM President and CEO Susan R. Meisinger. She added, "Who would have thought, for example, that social networking sites like MySpace -- often used as social hubs by so many young people -- would become a rich source of background information for job recruiters?"

The study also showed that HR respondents from all organizations (.jobs and non-.jobs organizations) said their most reliable sources for quality job candidates were: a) employee referrals; b) national online job boards (e.g. careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, HotJobs.com, etc.); and c) internal job postings.

Other summary results from the survey are:

-Organizations with a ".jobs" domain reported they had better outcomes
in recruiting due to advantages such as direct navigation and ease of
use. In addition, they were more likely to use tracking software that
allows the electronic management of an organization's recruitment
efforts.

-HR professionals from "non-.jobs" organizations cited the following as
their top five greatest challenges: a) difficulty in attracting high
quality candidates (67 percent); b) limited staff resources (39
percent); c) difficulty in attracting diverse candidates (30 percent);
and d) difficulty attracting enough candidates (30 percent); e)
difficulty in managing volumes of resumes (27 percent).

-The most common metrics to measure efficiency of e-recruiting efforts
from all organizations (.jobs and non-.jobs organizations) were: a)
time to fill outstanding job vacancies; b) cost per hire; c) number of
outstanding job vacancies; d) employee referral rate; and e) first-year
turnover.