Mystery solved: how bosses find new workers

By Mary Ann Milbourn | Orange County Register

March 5, 2011 at 6:00 a.m.

It is one of the mysteries of the universe — where do employers look when they want to hire somebody?

You can get a glimpse of what small business owners do in a survey recently conducted for Small Business California, a non-partisan group that advocates on behalf of small business.

The business owners were asked: “When you needed to hire employees over the past 24 months, what local resources did you access?”

Among the resources that were listed, “Internet job board” was the top source for finding new workers. Job boards were favored by 287 or 22% of the 1,712 small business owners who responded. And what job board do they go to? Craigslist.

Newspapers were the second source with 125 — 10% — using a local publication.

The biggest response was “other” with 384 respondents — 29% — citing this category. Word of mouth, employee referrals and networking were among the most common responses in this category.

But in this day of Internet applications and online resumes, there was one answer that came up surprisingly often: walk-ins. (Remember, these are small businesses. Almost half of the respondents — 46% — said they had one to four employees.)

Perhaps the most telling number of all in the survey: 563 of the small business owners — 43% — hadn’t hired in the last 24 months. Looking ahead, only 27% said they would bring on additional staff in the next six months.