This study is based on data from over 20 medium and large organisations in the Middle East and Asia, which have adopted on-line recruitment. We looked at over 1.1 million applicants, studied what application channel they used and compared that to where actual hires originated from.

1. Where You Can Find
The Best Candidates:
The Reality
A study on 1.1 million job applications
resulting in 6193 hires in the
Middle East and Asia
White Paper
cazar.com

2. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 02
The Study
Today, it is a reality that employers are recruiting
talent online because after all, that is where 90% of
candidates are searching for work. This study was
carried out to understand how companies attract
online applicants and more importantly, which
channels delivered the quality ones who get hired.
We studied 20 organisations across the Middle East
and Asia that have successfully adopted an online
recruitment strategy (see box below) and reviewed
1.1 million applications received in the last 6 months
of 2011; we then focused on the 6193 hires that
resulted from them to understand which channel they
originated from.
The jobs advertised varied from drivers and cleaners to
mid-level executives and senior management and the
employers were spread over a wide range of industries:
oil and gas, retail, hospitality, IT, telecommunications,
energy, banking, technology, construction, healthcare
and education.
Employers are recruiting
talent online because
that is where 90% of
candidates go when
looking for work.
Companies who adopt an online recruitment
strategy use the internet as their main
recruitment tool. These employers mostly
promote their vacancies through job boards,
social media and other websites, including
their own career site, to drive quality
candidate applications to a centralised
recruitment system.
What’s an online
recruitment strategy?

3. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 03
Where Companies
Find Applicants
One of the most impressive findings in the study was that 45% of all applicants heard about the vacancy through the
employer’s corporate career website. In fact, certain large companies get more traffic on their career site than on
their own corporate website. This of course, raises the question: how many qualified individuals would still apply if the
organisation didn’t have a career site?
Application By Source – July-Dec 20110.01%
Associations
0.87%
Career fair
1.11%
Recruitment agency
1.52%
Social Media
2.16% Employee referral
3.86% Browsing Online
3.91% Internal application
4.98% Search engines
5.18%
Networking
&
friends
0.08%
O
thers
0.22%
W
alk
in
0.67%
Job
alerts
0.71%
Newspaper, Radio
45.37%Corpor
ate Career Website
29.3% Job boards

4. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 04
It came as no surprise that job boards represented 29%
of applications. Although the quality of the candidates
was questionable (see p.5), they were systematically
being used by corporate recruiters.
However, high quality candidates did come through
Networking (5%) and Employee Referrals (2%) (see p.5).
It was interesting to note that apparently none of these
originated from social networks such as Facebook or
Linkedin.
In fact, social media, despite all its current popularity
and hype, produced an unexpectedly low 1.5% of
applications. This is likely due to the fact that most of
the employers do not yet use this tool consistently to
advertise their vacancies. We expect this number to
change in coming years since industry figures show that
job seekers use social media heavily in their job search.
Other channels which yielded poor results amongst
modern recruiters were career fairs (<1%) and
newspapers (<1%). Their limited reach and low cost
efficiency compared to alternative online sources
could explain why they produced an inferior
number of applications.
Social media, despite
all its current popularity
and hype, produced an
unexpectedly low 1. 5%
of applications.
The employers included in this study all had a corporate career website. These are sites that are dedicated
to recruitment, where employers present content that is relevant to candidates, such as the company
benefits, employee testimonials, corporate videos, growth opportunities, graduate programs, current and
future vacancies, etc.
Career sites allow companies to differentiate themselves from competition and target the right
candidates. When they have a good application process that is integrated with a recruitment system
which also connects to job boards and social media, they also decrease the reliance on recruitment
agencies and thus, drive down costs.
What is a Corporate Career Website?

5. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 05
What Channels Drive the
Most Quality Candidates?
Attracting people to work for your company is one thing, attracting the right people is another. To better understand
the quality of the various application channels, we looked at the 6193 hires that resulted from the 1.1 million
applications and examined where they originally came from.
Employer career sites generated almost one quarter of hires (23%). Given that career sites produced a large share of
applications, this came as no surprise.
Hires By Source - July - December 2011
0.26%
Newspaper,Radio
0.34%
Jobalerts
0.42%
Socialm
edia
0.81%
Search
engines
1.21%
Careerfair
1.34%
Brow
sing
online
1.61%
W
alk
in
3.92%
Internal Hires
4.59% Job boards
7.14% Networking & friends
23.18% Talent Pool
22.65%
CorporateCareer
Website
Employee referral
15.93% Recruitment
agency
8.53%
Other
8.07%

6. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 06
What Channels Drive the
Most Quality Candidates?
What did come as a an unexpected result however
was the fact that 23% of hires came from employer
talent pools, which are essentially databases of all
past applicants (see box below for details). Some
organisations in the study hired up to 40% of their
employees this way. Although the original source of
talent pool hires vary (see Fig 1.3, on p.6), the quality
of these candidates is high because they have already
been reviewed, rated and sometimes shortlisted
through previous application processes.
There is virtually no cost involved with sourcing
candidates through the talent pool and the time-
to-hire is considerably reduced since recruiters do
not need to spend any time advertising a vacancy,
nor do they need to screen or qualify thousands of
applications. Instead, they perform a quick search in
the talent pool to identify suitable candidates.
Talent pool hiring is
very cost-effective and
it signicantly reduces
time-to-hire.
0.09% of job board
applications resulted in
a hire.
Companies with an online recruitment
strategy invariably have a good recruitment
system that allows them to collect, screen
and qualify all past applications. On
average, employers in the study receive
180 applications for each job opening,
which means they are often left with a
surplus of qualified candidates, which they
flag in their system for future hiring needs.
Some employers in the study have millions
of applicants in their talent pool. It is a very
cost-effective recruitment method that
significantly reduces time-to-hire
What is a Talent Pool?Employee referrals proved to be a very effective
recruitment channel. Although they only accounted
for 2% of applications, they produced 16% of hires.
Several recent US-based studies have shown similar
results. Employees are likely to know people who work
in the same sector and because they have a good
understanding of a company’s culture and business
needs, they are more likely to recognise good-fit
candidates.
Given its relationship-based nature, we were surprised
to see that social media was not a more efficient tool
when it came to actually hiring talent: while 1.5% of
applicants were sourced from social media, only 0.4%
of hires were.
Job boards were an equally weak performer in terms
of efficiency. When we looked at the actual number of
hires (241) and applications (262,794) resulting from this
source, only 0.09% of job board applications resulted in
a hire. Search engines produced the same ratio.
Another noteworty result was the performance of
recruitment agencies. Most employers in this study
used to get 20%-40% of their hires through agencies
prior to using an online strategy. As companies have
become more web-savvy, the need for agencies has
greatly diminished, thus decreasing costs. There are
times however when organisations do need them:
they produced 6% of hires in this study. When using
agencies, employers used reporting technology to
identify the ones that delivered the best results.

7. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 07
Talent pools are built over time using a variety of sources. The following chart gives a breakdown of these
sources: corporate career websites made up 42% of talent pool hires and the rest was a mix of job boards, other
websites, employee referrals, networking and a number of other channels.
Source Of Talent Pool Hires - July - December 2011
0.34%
Newspaper,Radio
0.07%
Jobalert,sms,etc.
0.07%
Walkin
0.41%
Linkedin,Facebook,Twitter
1.24%
Careerfair
2.48%
Recruitm
entagency
4.01%
Search
engine
(Google, Yahoo, etc)
4.01% Internal Hires
5.18% Browsing News/industry/other websites
7.39% Employee referral
9.47%
Netw
orking
&
friends
41.97%Corporate
Career Website
O
ther
1
2.17%
Job Boards
11.13%

8. Insight | Where You Can Find the Best Candidiates: The Reality 08
Conclusions
The numbers in this report clearly demonstrates that
corporate career sites, talent pools and employee
referrals, which yield 62% of hires, produce the highest
quality of applicants. They are undoubtedly the most
essential tools for any corporate recruiter. Here are
some recommendations that we can make based on
our analysis
Get a career site and
send traffic to it
Corporate career sites are fundamental for employers
who want to recruit online. They produce a huge
number of applications and almost a quarter of all
hires.
However, the numbers don’t tell us everything.
Employers in this study direct all vacancy
advertisements to their career site because it allows
them to collect applications directly into their system. It
can also attract more good-fit candidates and provide
potential applicants with a better, more personal
candidate experience. The employer’s career site is
therefore a central hub for all candidates no matter
what sourcing channel they originate from.
Build a talent pool
Talent pools are just as valuable (23% of hires) as a
career site. Here are a few imortant componenents
that can help build a quality talent pool:
• A good recruitment system that allows recruiters find
candidates using specific criteria. A database that
is difficult to search is of little use. Beware of this, as
not all recruitment systems provide specific search
capabilities.
• A diversified candidate sourcing strategy that
includes a career site, referrals, job boards, social
media, etc.
Promote employee referrals
Employees help find 16% of hires, so companies
should ensure that all vacancies are effectively
communicated internally using appropriate tools. In
this study for example, the 20 employers systematically
published their vacancies directly from their
recruitment system to the company intranet and
employees could refer qualified individuals by sending
them specific links so that referrals could be tracked.
No, job boards are not a waste of
time
One may conclude that job boards are of little use
because they account for only 4% of hires, but this
would be a mistake.
Job boards are extremely useful for any employer
wanting to recruit online. An important part of online
recruiting is marketing vacancies in places where the
target candidates are looking. These candidates do
not necessarily know you exist so they may not visit your
website. Well-chosen regional and industry-specific
job boards are a great way to provide employers with
visibility and qualified job seeker traffic.
All sources mentioned in this study can contribute to
increasing your career site’s popularity and to build a
talent pool, so none should be ignored.

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