{"id":331,"date":"2012-10-19T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2012\/10\/19\/damned-lies-of-the-week\/"},"modified":"2012-10-19T12:07:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T19:07:00","slug":"damned-lies-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2012\/10\/19\/damned-lies-of-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Damned Lies of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

After watching @snarke<\/a>‘s vlog from yesterday<\/a>, I was going to post a comment about the most effective job search strategy being talking to people you know—friends, family, co-workers and former colleagues. I even had a statistic: my wife<\/a>, who’s also job-hunting right now, recently looked at her past work experience<\/a> and determined that she got roughly 70%<\/b> of all the jobs she’s ever had through personal connections<\/b>.<\/p>\n

But that was only anecdotal evidence. I was sure somebody had done a more comprehensive study of this phenomenon, so I decided to go looking for primary sources.<\/p>\n

And then the Internet disappointed me.<\/p>\n

This is the statistic—totally made-up<\/i>, as far as I can tell—which everyone likes to throw around: “80% of jobs are found through networking.” (Sometimes it’s “70%,” but most people seem to like “80%.”) The earliest online reference I could find is this 2008 Examiner.com article<\/a>, which says: “According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 percent of all jobs are found through networking.” Of course, I couldn’t verify that anywhere on the BLS web site, and the fact that Examiner.com does no editing or fact-checking<\/a> does not inspire confidence.<\/p>\n

There’s further discussion in this LinkedIn Q&A thread from 2009<\/a>. But the only source named there is a New York State Department of Labor web page<\/a> which actually says “over half of all employees get their jobs through networking, according to BH Careers International.” Please note that “over half” is not a specific number, and the company “BH Careers International” seems really sketchy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A lot of the web sites who cite the “80%” number these days seem to credit “ABC News.” The earliest reference to that appears to be this career coach blog post<\/a>, dated May 7th, 2010. I haven’t been able to find any actual news report which provides this information, either national or local. Also quoted in that same blog post is “70% of jobs are found through networking” according to the “US Dept of Labor & Statistics.” Sound familiar? See above to close the circle of lies.<\/p>\n

So I’m going to call this an urban legend of sorts, and stick with DeeAnn’s provable<\/i> 70% figure, even though it’s a small sample size. Meanwhile, here are some other job hunt-related statistics which may or may not be correct, but are actually sourced:<\/p>\n