Looking at the shear numbers of job postings in the last year, there has been a significant decrease. A January 2009 stat from Indeed.com indicated that besides education and healthcare, job postings in all other industries were down roughly 50% during 2008 when compared with 2007. With those numbers and with the current state of the economy, I’m guessing it’s just going to get worse in 2009. And the amount of companies renewing their licenses for the big ticket job boards has decreased significantly as well. So if job boards are going away, or are at least not as effective, where do you find candidates?

If you’re truly a great recruiter, you should be effective in leveraging the relationships you’ve made over the years. When hiring recruiters or sales reps, I believe years of experience is very important. Afterall, it takes time to develop those relationships. But with the social media phenomenon, you don’t need job boards. And if you’re smart, you’ll use these tools to the fullest capability, because ultimately these tools belong to you, not the company you’re working for (there’s a fine line here obviously).

If you talk to a recruiter and the first line of defense they lean on is Monster.com, they’re just not going to be all that effective. Of course, in the true “staffing” business, you’re going to have some weird requests from your clients that you’ll have to jump on Monster/CareerBuilder for. But ultimately, it’s the passive candidates that we want to find and lure away from their current employers. The active candidates are typically the ones that leave you high and dry when you least expect it. And most of the time I can’t blame them. Those active candidates are getting called by 5-10 other recruiters right now, commonly about the same position at the same client.

Here’s some other obvious ideas:

Referrals, Referrals, Referrals

Oh oh oh how important referrals are. Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXRoads have produced their 8th Annual Source of Hire Study (PDF) from their client base (55 total firms, and over 1800 recruiters responded), on specifically where companies are finding the candidates. I think it’s a pretty accurate look into where recruiters/companies are getting their candidates. Although, I think it’s a little too job board heavy for my liking. But, the stat they came up with for referrals was 27% (see figure below).

So 1 of every 4 employees hired are coming from referrals. That’s a pretty big number, and one that I’m positive increases the smaller the company is. Referrals are the best source of candidates. They typically stay around longer and are generally better employees because the referrer knows his name is attached to that person and will make sure they’re appropriate fits. So if you’re employer is not heavily investing in an employee referral program, push for it. It’s the single biggest and best source for quality candidates.

Social Media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this because this is a topic for a seperate blog and it’s been crammed down our throats for long enough. But, the point is, if you’re not using LinkedIn or Twitter as recruiting tools, you are sooooooooo far behind. LinkedIn is the single best recruiting tool I’ve ever used, and Twitter is obviously gaining momentum (although I haven’t hired anyone off of Twitter yet). But these social networking tools are a low cost way to reach out to a very broad candidate base and the sheer number of candidates using these tools is staggering.

User Groups

User groups are a great way to promote your personal brand as well as your company’s. I will admit, sometimes it’s tough to break into some user groups, most are “anti-recruiter”. But if you know one person on the inside, typically that’s all it takes. Go to a user group meeting with that one person, start meeting others. Get to be the recruiter of the group, or at least one of the recruiters that people go to for questions. Sign up for the dist list, and get the OK to post jobs to the list. At the very least, try to know someone in a technology user group that you recruit for and have that person post jobs for you. I know of 4 user groups in the Java community in Minneapolis that are active. There are multiple multiple groups out there, get involved!

Your own corporate website

This is often times overlooked. But having a solid strategy for enticing and driving candidates to your website can payoff in a big way. Social media plays big into this as well, with the majority of larger (and smaller) companies now are incorporating blogs and videos into their corporate site. Good example is the site I helped design and launch recently (www.objectpartners.com). We drive candidates to the site from the technical blog posts and the monthly tech talks. Since we’re so focused in one specific area, typically our name gets out in the software community pretty quickly. And it validates our expertise and existence as a company to a lot of candidates and clients. We also have quite a few subscribers to the blog, so we can drop in a job posting or two should they arise and we have difficulty filling it. Make your corporate site interactive, get people involved. Make it so candidates want to come to your site, offer something that they value.

The moral of the story is that job boards and postings are on the way out. But, I don’t think it’s difficult to make up that decline with other techniques and practices. Job boards will always be there, it’s just going to be the last stop in the recruiting process. Start today to refine your recruiting process, and ween yourself from using job boards; it will pay off in the long run.