I would have completely missed this if it wasn’t for Adam Gretton at Exec Appointments sending it my way. Of course he was blowing their trumpet as they came number one for job board effectiveness – but who can blame him!
The report was released in June and is the findings of a survey "completed by over 500 senior executives known to Harvey Nash".
You can view the full survey results here but the executive summary shows:
- One-quarter of CEOs have successfully secured a new role via an executive job board; confirming that these tools are an effective method of executive job searching. There was little difference in the levels of seniority of those who had successfully secured new roles via executive job boards. In other words CEOs are just as likely to find a new position online as a Manager.
- Have executive job boards reached their ceiling? The overall percentage of respondents prepared to register their CV on an executive job board has not changed since last year (at just over half) and neither has the percentage of people securing new roles. So although executive job boards may be an effective way of job searching for a (good) proportion of respondents, there is a suggestion that this number is not growing. Have executive job boards reached a ceiling? Only time will tell.
- Is social networking the next big thing? Whilst almost half of respondents are not prepared to register their CV on job boards, a huge 90% of people have registered on LinkedIn. Clearly then people approach social networking with a different mind set. When asked which tools would be most important in job searching in two years time compared to now, social networking showed the biggest increase (at the expense of traditional methods such as reading offline publications and directly contacting headhunters).
- Social networking for career searching is still in its infancy. Whilst many may consider social networking to be the next big thing in executive career management, it still has a long way to go. For instance only 2% of people have secured a new role via a social networking site compared to over one-quarter through an executive job board.
- LinkedIn clearly leads the way in social networking as a tool currently used in job searching and of those people using this site, 38% report success (they have been approached for a new role or secured a new role). Surprisingly although only 8% of
respondents reported using Xing, 24% of those people had found the site successful. Perhaps an up and coming competitor for LinkedIn, the small number of people using Xing are reporting significant success rates. - Building a strong personal brand can be powerful. 93% of participants who completed the survey believe that building a personal brand is important. Interestingly social networking came second in priority to building an offline peer network, demonstrating that traditional methods of directly connecting with people are still most popular.
