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Personal networking is key to staffing
By John
Burke • Bankrate.com
 Despite
the recent flurry of layoff announcements, the labor market is still
tight and recruitment remains an issue for many small-business owners.
Consider the following information when assessing your staffing
needs:
A recent poll conducted by the Society for
Human Resource Management and CareerJournal.com reveals that networking
and personal contacts are the most-used, and considered the most-effective,
methods by both job seekers and employers.
Ninety-five percent of both job-seekers and
human resource professionals use personal contacts and networking
to find a job or job candidate; 61 percent of job seekers found
this the most effective way of landing a job, while 78 percent of
the employers said it was most effective. Other popular job-search
tactics include Internet postings, newspaper ads and employee referrals.
The report also reveals that job seekers use
more informal tactics and consider them more effective, while HR
professionals stick to more formal and measurable hiring methods.
For example, 48 percent of job seekers reported
using places of worship to lobby for jobs; only 24 percent of HR
personnel reported using the same tactic.
Since a larger percentage of job seekers use
a wider array of tactics compared to employers, HR professionals
should consider jumping into the less-frequented areas of the employee
pool, such as online applications, Internet advertising and job
hotlines (all of which are used more by job seekers than HR pros.)
How have you found employees in the past, and
how do you plan to fill that staffing gap when the need arises?
-- Posted:
April 18, 2001
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