The Relationship of Recruiting Sources and Pre‐Hire Outcomes: Examination of Yield Ratios and Applicant Quality

Abstract

The study reported in this paper examined the relationship between 5 recruiting sources (college placement offices, newspaper advertisements, employee referrals, direct applicants, and job fairs) and several important but neglected pre‐hire outcomes (e.g., percentage of qualified applicants generated, percentage of applicants who were hired). As hypothesized, applicants who applied directly for jobs and those who were referred by current employees were more likely to receive job offers and to become employees than were applicants recruited via other sources. Unexpectedly, recruiting sources were not related to the measures of applicant quality used in this study.