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Five Surprising Facts About Recruiting

Updated: Jun 11

Recruiting today means keeping up with technology, tapping into a sea of passive candidates, building a talent network, developing a great candidate experience, promoting your company culture, and marketing your open positions. No employer or recruiter can afford to sit on the sidelines of social media and mobile technology. Old school just doesn’t cut it when you need a competitive advantage in recruiting.


Everyone recruiting today needs top skills and resources to build the type of qualified, talented workforce required for business success. Emerge Talent Cloud discusses this in “Top Recruiting Resources to Sharpen Your Skills” and “Best Resources for Recruiter Training in 2014”. Aside from continuous improvement to keep up with the latest recruiting technology and techniques, there are many sources of good information about the current state of recruiting to apply to your recruiting process. Here’s a sampling of a few of the most interesting facts about recruiting in 2014.


56% of all companies surveyed said they had a candidate reject their job.


Career Builder’s Applicant Experience Study revealed that even in an unpredictable economy, candidates who have a bad experience when applying for a job will drop that employer or reject their job offer. Career Builder’s survey participants said they’d tell friends and family about their bad experience with a company’s recruiting process, discuss it in social media, and not buy the company’s products or services. How you treat candidates when they consider pursuing their career with your company can affect your reputation and your bottom line.


Only 35% of applicants are actually qualified for the jobs they apply to.


These interesting facts come from research by CEB. With reports by the Wall Street Journal that companies like Starbucks get millions of applicants for their 65,000 openings, employers and recruiters have a huge job screening applicants before they ever get to the interviewing and hiring phase. That means that finding ways to clarify the openings and requirements so more of the right candidates are applying is very important to recruiting success and return on investment.


Thousands of resumes are posted each month on Monster in each job market.

Employers and recruiters have access to hundreds, even thousands of resumes for their openings. What was the response to your last job posting? How did you handle it? Screening resumes can quickly overwhelm even the most efficient recruiting staff, so the more concise your postings and more compelling your company’s career web page and social media messages, the easier it will be to fine-tune your recruiting campaigns.


18,400,000 applicants found their jobs on Facebook.

One of the surprising results of Jobvite’s 7th Annual Social Recruiting Survey was how many people are finding a job through social media. More than 18 million applicants found their job on Facebook. LinkedIn is not the only place candidates are putting their professional profiles anymore. People are watching companies they’re interested in working for on social media including Facebook to find out when openings are posted, see the company culture, and interact with hiring managers and recruiters.


There are five generations in the workforce today.

Employers and managers are working with five generations in their employee populations today. Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millenials, and Gen 2020 are all in the workforce today, working together, building your company, and dealing with your customers. The workforce is more diverse than ever and requires a different approach to recruiting. Young managers have older workers reporting to them. Boomers and Millenials and Traditionalists all think differently about work and what they want out of it, and employers have to pay attention to generational differences when attracting and retaining employees, offering benefits, and communicating with candidates and employees.

You need to consider these facts about recruiting when you’re planning your recruiting strategy for the coming year. You can’t afford to if you want to build the qualified workforce you need for a competitive advantage.


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