We receive a lot of questions from employers asking us essentially the same thing, “what recruiting channels should I use?” The answer to this question is always “It Depends.” It depends on the job position, it depends on your company’s employer brand, it depends on the resources you have on your recruiting team, it depends on how much recruiting budget you have, etc. We listen to their situation and then provide recommendations.

I’ve thought about this for a while and I think I have a better answer: “Use them all and find out!” Every recruiting channel offers different benefits and limitations and works better for certain situations and companies. The key is collecting real-time recruitment metrics on these recruiting channels to figure out what works best for your company in different situations. Every company’s recruiting experience is different and the best way to figure out what works best to analyze metrics based on your past recruiting efforts, not the efforts of everybody else!

Once you have your recruiting metrics solution in place, now it’s time to start using the recruiting channels that you think will work for your company. Here’s a list of recruiting channels that you should utilize in your recruitment marketing strategy:

Major Job Boards: When I say major job boards, I mean mostly Monster and CareerBuilder but there are others that can fit this description as well like DICE, Craigslist, Indeed & SimplyHired. These boards offer tremendous amounts of applicant volume to employers and can be quite an asset if used correctly.

Niche Job Boards: Niche jobs boards can provide a good deal of value to jobs that are highly specialized or if you are targeting a small percentage of the workforce. College boards and industry specific boards are great examples.

Social Networks: Social recruiting has a tremendous amount of buzz right now in the industry. Recruiting through Twitter and Facebook can be a great way to engage with and recruit top talent. The two necessities with social recruiting, however, are time / labor cost and engagement. Social recruiting is free only to the degree that it doesn’t cost any money. A great social recruiting strategy only happens when theirs effort to engage with qualified candidates. Social networks are NOT job boards and should not be used just to post jobs. You need to provide value to receive value in the social space.

Email: A great way to reach your Talent Network when new opportunities and positions. Candidates have opted in to this process so you reach a qualified and receptive audience.

SMS (text messaging): Mobile Recruiting is a channel that is becoming more important in recruiting every passing day. I believe this channel will become the most popular among the youngest generation of job seekers. Here’s an article I did on why Mobile Recruiting is important.

Resume Sourcing: There is a tremendous amount of quality resumes out there on job boards and on the web that are just sitting out waiting to be found. Utilizing technology to source these resumes for certain keywords and job positions can be a great way to find quality talent.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): SEM provides a great way to reach job seekers that are searching Google for specific jobs and positions. The Pay per click model also enables you to pay only for performance.

Referrals: In most cases, the best candidates come from internal employee referrals. Make sure to build out an internal process to let employees know when you are looking to fill positions.

I encourage you to try different job ad distribution channels out and measure how they perform! You may be surprised by the results!

Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.