Dive Brief:

• Today's two top job search engines—Indeed and Simply Hired—accounted for the bulk of external online recruiting activity, namely 62% of interviews and 59% of hires, according to the 2016 edition of the annual "Top Sources of Hire" report from SilkRoad.
• SilkRoad, which offers cloud-based talent management solutions, also found Indeed delivered more than six times as many interviews as CareerBuilder, the next largest external source, and it also yielded nearly two and half times as many hires as all the other top branded external sources combined, i.e. CareerBuilder, Craigslist, LinkedIn and Monster.
• Employee referrals dominate recruiting among internal sources, the report found, producing 40% of interviews and 37% of hires, while ranking number one for hires among all the sources in the study

Dive Insight:

Created from more than 13 million applications, 600,000 interviews and 300,000 hires, SilkRoad's aggregate research offers a "comprehensive view" of the effectiveness of talent acquisition in today’s job seeker's market, according to John Westby, vice president of corporate marketing at SilkRoad.

In a job seeker's market, having effective external and internal talent sourcing programs are key. As noted, employee referrals continue to dominate the internal market. This study makes it clear that effective use of job boards still holds an important place in external hiring as well.

“From a universe of sources, professionals are challenged to make intelligent selections to tap the right talent pipelines and optimize their recruitment budgets," Westby says.