We are very happy to announce that the The Source of Talent 2009 Report is available for download.

We are grateful to all survey participants for openly sharing their data, our sponsors ‐  JobAdder, JobGenie, NT3, Page Up People, PeoplePulse and our partner Recruiter Daily ‐ and contributors Dr. Ian Williamson and Gerry Crispin, for making the study possible.

In all 409 organisations of varying sizes, industry backgrounds and regional locations completed the survey. A total of 92,136 hires were recorded using seventeen identifiable sources of talent for the period July 2008 through to June 2009.

The key findings of the report include:

1. Source of talent varies across Australia with almost twenty identifiable source of talent.
2. Job boards, in their various iterations, take a leadership role being the predominant source of talent in Australia with 29.64% of hires attributed to them.
3. Perceptions of the most effective sources of talent by recruiters differ from the reality of where talent is sourced.
4. Different industries use significantly different sources to find talent within Australia.
5. The different regions of Australia also seem to source talent differently, for example in the ACT 49.70% of talent is found through internal recruiters.
6. Referrals as sources are not as developed as expected being only the fourth most successful source at 7.57% of hires.
7. Print media while having a reputation of an archaic channel still exists as the seventh most successful source of hires.
8. Employers and agency recruiters differ in how they source talent with agency recruiters relying heavily on job boards.
9. Social media is in its infancy ranking last as a source talent in Australia, with usage higher in smaller organisations.
10. Data collection is poor with over 7% of organizations have no reliable method of tracking their source of talent.

There is a lot more in the report so go download it and have a read, we hope that the report stimulates further discussions within the HR and Recruitment industries.

A quick update on the report progress. We are in the final stages of reviewing the content and have begun the task of setting out the report in its final format. This process will take about another week before the report is released.

A quick teaser the regional breakdown of respondents were:

• NSW – 34.47%
• VIC – 28.85%
• QLD – 16.38%
• WA – 9.54%
• SA – 5.13%
• TAS – 2.44%
• ACT – 2.44%
• NT – 0.73%

In the meantime don’t forget to check out our sponsors:

• JobAdder
• JobGenie
• NT3
• Page Up People
• PeoplePulse

Survey Close

The survey is now closed.

We would like to thank the 409 organisations who participated in the survey. The only downside of so many participants is the amount of data we have to review. We are estimating that the report will be available for download from early August. For everyone who registered you will be informed when the report is available.

If you did not complete the survey and would like to be informed as to when the report is ready, register your interest.

Prize Winners

Last week we drew the winners of our prizes. The winner of the Nintendo Wii Console was:

• dl_bennett at bigpond.com.au

We will be contacting you very soon to arrange delivery.

The $50 book vouchers winners are:

• dnuroo at dws.com.au
• jvarcoe at ipa.com.au
• jspeirs at volarerecruitment.com.au
• jackie at protectoraluminium.com.au
• johnc at impactappointments.com.au

The vouchers, from Australian owned and operated online book store Boomerang Books, will be emailed directly to the winners.

Welcome to the news section for the Australian Source of Talent survey.  Subscribe to keep up to date on our progress.