The topic around job board effectiveness is always an emotional one, from the supporters to the haters. Until a few years ago, it was difficult to gauge and compare the results from a specific job boards – with each other. Remember back in the day when candidates were asked to self supply their source?

The good news is ATS and other online recruiting platform providers have gained a lot of traction and now offer an inside look at candidate source data.

A couple of weeks ago we shared data which shows Indeed.com as the clear front-runner for traffic.  How are they doing with actual hires? SilkRoad has the answer.  Earlier today they announced the results from a survey they conducted with their clients.

Their research:

• Provides insights into the most effective online recruitment advertising channels
• Is industry, company size, and position agnostic
• Includes hiring data from 700 SilkRoad clients, encompassing 200,000 job postings, 9.4 million applicants, and over 100,000 hires.

Highlights of the survey include:

• 55% of all hires were from internal employees, referrals, and corporate career sites.
• Of the remaining external online sources, Indeed takes the top spot in a big way, generating 42% more hires than the second highest source.
• Social recruiting isn’t represented in the top results

What’s appealing about their research is SilkRoad is not the product company within the survey (i.e. a job board).  A clear example is the recent JobVite report report showing 78% of job seekers found their job on Facebook.  Huh?

With that said,  one gap is for those companies that that have robust sourcing capabiiities which take a “we find them” approach vs. a more traditional “they find us” one – as seems to be the case here. And, to continue to evolve the conversation further, getting to the post hire quality data as a comparison point between these specific sources is next on the list.

Congratulations to the team at Indeed for taking the #1 spot.