I believe most of in-house staffing professionals have ever done similiar studies on external source of hire. Nevertheless, I haven't yet seen any formal benchmark studies published by HR agencies in China. The CareerXroads 7th Annual Source of Hire Study stands in stark contrast to the situation in China and shows how important we could design our own sourcing strategy based on market data. The following figure takes a closer look at the major sourcing channel effectiveness and the growing trend for some channels coming to light.
Source: CareerXroads 7th Annual Source of Hire Study (200 Companies, 5000+ employees, Named Brand)
Simply put, employee referral ranks No.1 in terms of hiring quantity per channels (accouts for 28.15%). For some MNC companies, like IBM China, will be higher than it and gets to 40%; On contrast, some local companies, like Haier, even doesn't have employee referral programs in place. There are many ways to skin a cat; but some are looking beyond, while some are keeping pace with. The interesting findings from this report were definitely not coming from what percentage of hiers that each sourcing channel could cover. The most visible trend in terms of employee referrals is that Alumni and other types of referrals (e.g. vendor) appear to be growing rapidly. Meanwhile, we see a compelling trend with the growth of Direct Sourcing and a related reduction in agency hires. Emm... I believe the latter solution could help staffing managers defend their turf and justify their add-value services provided to business units, especially in the economic downturn. Looking beside, Oracle China could be the role model which isalways dedicating to pursue excellence of Direct Sourcing.
When we handed over our sourcing scorecard to senior management team, have you ever included another measurement as "Source Value Index"? I take the suspicion on how many staffing professionals ever look at it.Here comes the definition: Source Value Index = Percent of Hires/Percent of Spend. The above table tells us a lesson how we can measure the effectiveness of sourcing channels from the ROI angle. Coming as no superise, employee referrals rank No.1, which means it's not only the most effective channels contributing the most portion of qualified candidates, but also with a relatively low cost. The interesting part comes to us again, which social networking ranks higher than job boards and other channels. How innovative sourcing strategies can significantly reduce acquisition costs as well as providing you with a highly targeted source of talent. What could we reflect on this trend? Yes, please take the next generation sourcing channels into your consideration from now on.
