Getting that initial job interview is a win all on its own. Presenting yourself as a stranger and raising enough interest in your talent to be asked to an interview means you know how to present yourself as a viable candidate to a company with a spot to fill. But how did that first interview come your way? It used to be that networking, personal connections, and even leg work were needed to get you in the door, but that process has largely shifted online for many. For younger professionals, this method is all they’ve ever known. We asked workers, “How Did You Get Your First Interview At Your Current Company?” and the responses paints a picture of the different experiences workers have as the mantle is passed from one generation to the next.
This information comes from the latest reading of an ongoing survey by Comparably. More than 10,000 employees responded to the question.
Looking at the responses from all employees, it’s clear that applying online is the most common method to land an initial interview. Referrals are the second-most popular method overall, with recruiters following in third place. Networking, a skill many still openly say they lack, has dropped to the back of the pack definitively.
More women than men say they applied online to engender the initial interest they got from the company they currently work for. Men, who also chose applying online as their most frequent answer, still rely more heavily on referrals and the use of recruiters to get interviews. Since women have long been undervalued in the U.S. job market, it makes quite a bit of sense that they would have found their “in” through a different method than has traditionally worked for males.
Among ethnicities, Asian/Pacific Islanders relied on online applications the least, followed by Caucasians and those who declare themselves “other.” Hispanic/Latino and African-American respondents were both more likely to use the online application notice to get their shot. Again we see that those groups who have been traditionally underserved by the formally popular methods of job seeking have found a more potentially democratic way.
The youngest workers lean on online applications the most, and the gap between that choice and the second-most favored option (referral) is a full 16 percentage points. It can be fairly said that, for the 18-25 age group, getting an interview anyway other than online must feel archaic. The dependence on online application goes down as we proceed through the age brackets: the 46-50 age group still depends on referrals most frequently, but it may be true that the job that people the age are angling for are more often the kind of positions where a referral is preferred.
A similar progression is seen when we look at work experience levels, with 45% of entry level employees using an online application to get their first interview at their current job. For those who have worked for 10 years or more, referral is the chosen method.
Latest reading as of December 31..
