First off, research suggests that only 2-4% of jobs get filled through internet job-boards so the odds of you filling the vacancy through this channel are quite slim.
Secondly, the only people who post their CVs on internet job boards are active job hunters and the person you need may not be in the market for a job right now.
Thirdly, in my experience, top performing talent rarely if ever post their CVs on internet job boards. On the rare occasions that top performers are out of work, their professional network quickly moves in and a plethora of opportunities are quickly brought to them to consider. Yes, even in this climate, top performing talent doesn’t find it hard to get a job. In tough economic climates more than ever, companies want to hire the best, the people who are going to make the difference to the bottom line.
Of course, the assumption I have made is that you want to hire top performing talent. It’s hard to understand why you would want to surrender the competitive advantage of hiring the very best person for the job but I guess there may be a reason. If this is the case, then I would agree that an internet job-board would be a more cost-effective way of going about it, although you should factor in the time to sift through the 300 applicants, 90% of which are unlikely to be relevant to the role you have on offer.
The world’s leading companies utilise a wide range of channels and methods to source talent for their business. They use headhunters for filling key positions that have a big impact on business results. These are not limited to boardroom executive hires or senior managers; it might be a sales position or a customer service manager. If you want to get the top performers that make a difference to the bottom line, you simply can’t afford to rely on internet job-boards. Of course, you can still waste your money on headhunters that don’t search effectively for top performers but that’s a whole subject in its own right and one I will tackle on another day.
