Recruiting Trends, 2016-2017. 46th Edition. Brief 5: Recruiting Tools
Author: Michigan State University, Collegiate Employment Research Institute
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Job Applicants,Social Networks,Talent,Cooperatives,Recruitment,Internship Programs,Social Media,Employers,Employees,Employment,Trend Analysis,Personnel Selection,Employment Patterns,Organization Size (Groups),Occupational Clusters,Occupational Surveys

The Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) generated this sample from employers currently seeking college talent through their interactions with college and university career services offices. Nearly 200 career service centers from around the country invited their employers to participate in this study. Approximately 4,350 employers provided information useful for understanding recruiting trends and practices. CERI uses information provided by those recruiting talent for full-time positions, internships, and co-ops to produce research briefs. Those employers seeking talent have a wide array of tools available to them to assist them in identifying, managing, and selecting job candidates. Each year CERI asks respondents to select the recruiting tools they like to use. The report revealed that although recruiters select tools that are cool, fun to use, or highly dependable, they mainly rely on just a few. This year, respondents were asked to rate how important each tool was for talent acquisition (from 0 = no importance at all to 10 = critical importance). Although employers may use all the tools included in the survey, perhaps 6 to 8 are used most often. The most common tool is posting a job announcement in places where candidates can easily find it. The two most common venues are the organization's website and the college or university's career management system. These passive practices are basic résumé depositories and as such may require little interaction between recruiters and candidates. The benefit for recruiters may be the distance from which they can winnow the unqualified candidates. In addition to traditional methods, several new ones are challenging the functional use of résumé depositories. Employers have three proactive means for connecting to and recruiting talent whom they rate highly. Internships and co-ops, short-term employment (summer or between academic terms), and career fairs are the most important tools in the toolbox. Employers also rely on their current employees, including alumni from schools where they recruit, to identify candidates. This year, internships and co-ops earned the top spot for active talent development tools (average 7.66, with 97% of employers using this tool). While most of these strategies have been around a long time, social media is relatively new. Its transient nature and brief shelf life make identifying and capturing qualified candidates a less than perfect recruitment tool. One social media provider -- LinkedIn -- clearly leads in its functional use for recruiting. As organizations become more sophisticated in using social media, we may see other media sites (Facebook and Twitter, for example) be more widely employed for their ability to connect with, identify, and manage talent. With the more competitive environment requiring employers to cast a wider net for talent, more employers appear to be turning to the large web-based recruitment portals, like CareerBuilder, Indeed and Monster, to assemble a large pool of candidates. The rating for this strategy shot up this year, compared to ratings obtained since 2008.