| As a department head I've hired almost 100 people over the last 12 months (We are growing very fast at the moment). The majority of these are applications that come in through a normal application, although I'm not sure how many resumes never make it past recruiting. Next to this, we have grown the team by moving over employees from other departments asking for internal transfers, these have about the same success rate as external applicants. And then there are referrals from people who already work in the department (can be for people who already work for the company). The success rate on these candidates is indeed higher. I think this is because the person referring them has already thought about whether the person referred is a fit or not. We give them the same interview process, and don't always tell the interviewer that the candidate is a referral. That said, I see 3 things that might push the reality closer to what you said "most jobs are filled through referrals".: 1. If you're hiring only a few people, the statistics will probably bias towards referrals. It is easy to get a few referrals for a specific position if you need them. 2. Referrals might end up on the desk of the hiring manager earlier (e.g. from employee to hiring manager) compared to an official application (webform to recruiting to manager). Sometimes we can close a position before the first resumes from recruiting even land on my desk. 3. As jobs get more senior, a hiring mistake becomes more expensive, and in that sense hiring a strong referral is on average going to reduce this risk. So, for higher level jobs I think indeed that many are filled through networking or targeted reach-outs rather than open applications. |
> I'm not sure how many resumes never make it past recruiting
I've asked the recruiters at my company about this (we hired roughly similar numbers). Their response was that they filter a surprising number of applicants, but they are almost always from people who are completely unqualified for the job. The referral helps fast track them through this, but it doesn't provide much more than getting their foot in the door.