Glassdoor recently did a study with over 116,000 interviews to see what channel led to the highest success rate (i.e., an offer). By channel they mean how the jobseeker got connected with the hiring company. The results aren’t all that surprising. Employee referrals (knowing someone on the inside) turned out to be the best foot in the door with staffing agency coming in a close second. What did surprise us was how few employee referrals there were (only 10%). Most people scored interviews through online applications, and the success rate wasn’t very high for this channel. As hiring managers work harder at streamlining the hiring process, they’re probably gonna look less and less to this channel as an effective one.

Is Social Media Underutilized by Job Seekers?

That’s simply not possible right? With everyone shouting about how social media has changed the dynamic of how we interact in every way. Are people just using it for cat videos and taxis than say for their careers? You’d think people would use sites like LinkedIn to tunnel into the companies they want to work for, but maybe there are pitfalls to social media connections. Are they strong enough? Would you recommend some guy who connected with you on LinkedIn because he was a friend of a friend’s coworker five years ago and with whom you share a membership in the Pugs Owners Club?

Staffing Agency for the Win

Staffing agencies held a strong second, and obviously this is both industry-specific and general staffing agencies, as well as staffing agencies with both good and bad hiring records. So imagine, if you used an agency that was a little more specific to what you do, and one that has a really good track record (that you investigated). It could be a lot less painful than linking in with people you don’t really know, but share a membership in the Pug Owners Club.

Click her for the full results of the Glassdoor study.

About NextGen

NextGen is the brainchild of longtime telecom professionals with nearly 50 years of experience and millions of dollars in Telecom Recruiting Services. We focus on establishing long term relationships with our clients and candidates so we can recruit the best and the brightest in the telecom industry. This ‘quality over quantity’ approach is at the heart of everything we do and has resulted in successful job placements at Fortune 1000 firms worldwide.