Interesting results in the 2006 DirectEmployers Association Recruiting Trends Survey conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton.

Corporate websites are working well for sourcing:
• Fifty-one percent of new hires were sourced from the Internet.
• Employer websites were the single best source of new hires in 2005, followed closely by employee referrals.

Quality and recruiting processes are improving:
• Fifty-eight percent of respondents felt that the quality of hires in 2005 had improved relative to previous years.
• Fifty-six percent of respondents agreed that recruiting technology had made the job of recruiting easier.

The Source Value Index (see below) provides an indicator of the value of a source from an investment perspective. Referrals, social networking websites, and corporate careers websites are ranked as the top three.

As for the future, most study respondents anticipate their organization relying more heavily on their own website (74%) and employee referrals (68%) as a source of applicants in 2006.