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Networking is a great way to get a new job.gehringj/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Most people expect to get their next job through networking, but they might not be happy with the results, new research shows.

Fifty per cent of the U.S. and Canadian workers surveyed by Right Management, which is part of ManpowerGroup, said they expect to get their next job from person-to-person networking, 22 per cent from an online job-board posting, and 19 per cent from an agency or a recruiter. Only 8 per cent thought they would get a job by cold calling a prospective employer, and 1 per cent thought they might find a job in a newspaper ad.

"These findings track well with actual outcomes," Monika Morrow, senior vice-president of career management at Right Management, which provides career services to Fortune 500 companies, said in a release. The survey queried more than 550 employees in an online poll earlier this month.

"It turns out that face-to-face contact is how more than half of our candidates find new employment based on firm data for the past five years, although nowadays job searches may begin through social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. By itself, however, job boards are about half as effective in actual circumstances, just as the individuals surveyed anticipate."

While job seekers have changed how they look for new positions, about half of new employees who took on a new role last year are experiencing "buyers remorse," according to Development Dimensions International's (DDI) latest global research on hiring trends. Not only are new employees questioning their decision to take a new job, many companies are examining their hiring practices as one in eight new employees (14 per cent) were failures in the past 12 months, the study found.

"There is a great paradox in that both unemployment and the number of open positions hover at uncomfortably high levels – and simultaneously, organizations and candidates are shaky about the decisions they made in staffing and accepting roles this year," Scott Erker, senior vice-president for DDI's selection solutions and the study's co-author, said in a release. DDI's study, titled Global Selection Forecast 2012, includes responses from more than 250 staffing directors and 2,000 new hires from 28 countries, and it was conducted in partnership with Oracle.

Nearly one-third of staffing directors blamed hiring mistakes on an over-reliance on the hiring manager's evaluation, while 21 per cent blamed it on candidates who were too good at overselling their skills. Only half of the organizations rated their hiring process as "highly effective."

"An unpleasant surprise after a candidate becomes an employee is that the new hire just is not cut out for the job. The shame of it all is that information about candidates goes undiscovered in the selection process," Mr. Erker said. "Hiring managers need to go further below the surface to really get to the truth about an employee's fit for the job."

DDI's research also found that only 51 per cent of new hires are confident in their decision to accept a new job, often because the hiring process doesn't paint a true picture of the work, the department and the company. The study found that organizations that give candidates a realistic preview of the job in question were more likely to find hires who were confident in their decision to take on the new role and would stay in the job.

Today, interviews remain a key selection tool for hiring managers. But the catch is that they must be done correctly. The study found that only one in three staffing directors felt their hiring managers were skilled at conducting high quality interviews. Bad interviews include bad questions, some of the top bad questions included those about race, age, religion, belief in ghosts, and even food preferences. In addition, less than 30 per cent of staffing directors felt satisfied with their interviewer training program, the study found.

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