Who you know is what you get

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/04/06/new-research-shows-where-employers-find-their-new-hires/

Anybody can blather on about where to look for jobs. Uninformed opinions (as your education at Niagara University should be teaching you) are worth less than the paper they are printed on. Turning over rocks to look for jobs doesn’t work too well.

Here are some research findings about one company’s analysis of its own hiring practices. The company, Silk Road, describes itself as a “provider of cloud-based social talent management solutions.” In other words, they match jobs and people. Data is based on almost 10 million applications for nearly a quarter million jobs. The article is from Forbes, a top business magazine.

Some of the results, in a nutshell:

• Successful candidates from “external” sources (outside the company) use online job aggregators. The article supplies a list of top online sites.
• Individual company “career” websites (listing what jobs are open) produce even more successful candidates who are hired.
• Candidates who have a referral get the most jobs. 

In brief, this article suggests that big job-posting sites are good starting points. But you should also be targeting companies you want to work for, checking their job sites maybe once a week to see new postings. And you should network, network, network!