I suspect that newspapers will continue to get bad news like this for years to come. A new study
by technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton found that major U.S. employers
are relying on the Internet as their primary hiring source, and having
some of their best success online.
The study says that 51 percent of new hires at studied companies were developed from
Internet sources — with the highest-quality candidates coming from the
employers’ corporate websites and from employee referrals. Newspapers,
meanwhile, accounted for only 5 percent of new hires.
With stats like that, it’s not hard to imagine that employment ads at
individual newspapers will plummet badly in the future. Of course,
newspaper-owned Internet employment efforts like CareerBuilder are the industry’s chief hope for survival in the recruitment marketplace by integrating online and print.
The Booz Allen Hamilton-run study also suggested that employers
increasingly will direct a greater proportion of applicants through
their own corporate websites rather than through other online
employment sites, which presents challenges for CareerBuilder, Monster.com,
and many other online job services. (A future where Google helps
job-seekers find employment opportunities on corporate websites looks
likely.)
Specifically, the study found these Internet hiring practices:
corporate employment websites accounted for 21 percent of new hires;
general job boards, 15 percent; niche job boards, 6 percent; social
network web sites, 5 percent; and commercial resume databases, 4
percent.
