For the job search, your personal contacts are important

In advising candidates on how to find a job, I always emphasize "working your rolodex," as I call it, and some recent empirical evidence underscores the importance of that advice.

When I was a manager, I read an interesting article about the sources of employees. The basic tenet of the article (and if you can find it please tell me so I can link to it from here) is as follows. An employee is more likely to stay longer at a job (usually desirable for managers who like to minimize turnover) if the employee came to the job through a friend of someone working at the company, or a friend of a friend. The article was based on statistics gathered as part of a study.

EE Times has published an article "How to keep engineers happy". What I found so interesting were two graphs with the article. It's worth your time to study them if you're looking for a job. One is "What recruitment methods does your company use to hire an engineer?" The other is "What recruitment method have you found to be most effective when hiring an engineer." Mouse over and click on the graphs to enlarge them. The bar labeled "Personal referrals" easily tops all other recruitment methods in both graphs. The EE Times article is based on a survey conducted by EE Times.

My advice remains therefore for a candidate to "work your Rolodex" very thoroughly as part of your job search strategy. Tell friends that you're looking; ask them if they know someone in the company you're targeting; contact old classmates from school; friends of your relatives; and so on. The EE Times article underscores that personal referrals are the easiest target for you to hit.

I've put together some other recommendations for job candidates. There is also a list of currently available job descriptions.