Majority of Hires Never Report Looking for a Job

Every month there are millions of people who are looking for new jobs, even if they already have one. About ten percent of all of these job searchers swill switch employers in the next month. However, the majority of these people never report that they were looking for a new job. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that instead of these workers actively seeking the jobs, the jobs actually found them.

This information came from analyzing job search and employment transition rates over the past 20 years. On average, it’s estimated that about 4.3 percent of people with jobs were actively searching for a new job. Recent college grads, at a rate of 9.6 percent, were more likely to be searching for new jobs while employed compared to people age 45 or older (2.3 percent).

The really interesting statistics, however, are about hiring probability. While research suggests people who search for jobs are more likely to find a new position, employed people who did not search for a new job made up about 25.7 percent of all new hires, compared to 7.4 percent for employed people who were actively searching.  Therefore, 77.6 percent of all employed people who changed employers were not actively looking for a new position. This is because there are so many more people who do not actively search than those who do.

So what does this mean? It would seem that a lot of these people are being attracted to new positions by corporate recruiters, by a friend alerting them to an opening or other similar tactics.  Bottom line is…recruiters are an important ally in helping companies find that hard to find, passive candidate who might not be actively looking on the job boards.