Job Sites: Are They Worth It?

If you're newly unemployed, your first stop -- after the nearest bar, that is -- was probably your laptop, where you logged on to a big online job site. For starters, only a small percentage of jobs are filled using the sites, which claim over 95 of the Fortune 100 as customers. That's partly because the more senior the position, the more companies value referrals, or "passive candidates" -- those not officially seeking work. Hiring them once meant paying search firms thousands of dollars per job to open their golden Rolodexes. But with emergent social networks like LinkedIn, in-house recruiters now have another way to reach such talent. Tim Jones, VP of recruiting at ConAgra Foods, says his use of traditional sites is "down by big numbers" -- two-thirds less than in 2007. While that's partly from the economy, he's also posting fewer top jobs because he gets so many resumes.