You’ve been on the job search for a while and aren’t having any luck. You’ve been using job board after job board, but you haven’t been successful yet. Why? You’re looking in all the wrong places.

A new survey conducted by SilkRoad found that while job search engines lead to the most job interviews, employee referrals lead to the most hires. You may think your job search is on track, but to get hired, employers need to be able to find you where they’re looking. So where are they looking for talent?

Here’s a look at the sources employers turn to for their talent needs and how to use them to up your chances of getting hired:

Appearance can make or break your chances of landing a job in an instant. An April 2015 study from the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that 52 percent of interviewers make their decision about a candidate in the first 5 to 15 minutes of the job interview.

When considering the presence you want to exude, you have to find a balance. It’s crucial to look at every detail of your appearance and behavior, but you also don’t want to overthink things too much.

You want to be honest and authentic, celebrating who you are while feeling good about your appearance. There are no wrong answers when it comes to your appearance because every interviewer is different. However, you do want to dress to impress and carry yourself confidently so you stand out as top talent.

Pay attention to two very important aspects of your presence — attire and body language. Here’s how to present your best self and nail your next job interview:

It’s no secret that social media is a crucial element to hiring these days. In fact, a shocking 82 percent of recruiters sign into LinkedIn to screen candidates during the hiring process, according to Jobvite. But if you’re simply copying and pasting your well-crafted resume into your LinkedIn profile, you’re doing yourself a career injustice.

While your resume and your LinkedIn profile should share similarities, they are not one in the same. While your resume can have you cutting back on your professional narrative, LinkedIn allows for a 360-degree view of your experience.

Put down your resume and use these six tips to breathe life into your LinkedIn profile:

When people hear the term ‘etiquette,’ they tend to think of stuffy, formal dinner parties that involve too many forks, white linen napkins, and uncomfortable suits and gowns.

This discomfort and stress people associate with it is unnecessary. Etiquette is important to have in several settings, and it’s easy to learn. And one of the most important places to act appropriately is in the office.

In an April 2014 report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), companies listed professionalism in the top four competencies they consider to be essential in their candidates.

Proper manners in the office is not as simple as refraining from cursing at your co-workers or saying “thank you” to your team. Communication is the most important aspect of every company, and email is a major part of that.

For job seekers, email is usually one of the first modes of correspondence they engage in with potential employers, so learning how to write professional emails is crucial to the job hunt.

Let’s take a look at how you can help job seekers learn proper email etiquette:

An April 2014 report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) asked companies to identify the top competencies they consider to be an “essential need” in college graduates they are looking to hire. Among the top four career readiness competencies, critical thinking and problem solving topped the list.

Critical thinking is a vital skill to have in order to succeed in your career. It is in high demand because you use it frequently throughout each day in almost every aspect of your life.

Critical thinking is when you systematically process information to make the best decision and to gain a better understanding of things.

If you can develop this crucial skill and put it to good use, you will be among the top candidates in the talent pool. Here are a few simple steps to becoming a critical thinker:

Aristotle said it best — “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Habits define our daily life. These small decisions and the lifestyle choices we make have large impacts on our personal and professional life, so it’s good to develop a sense of awareness of what’s working for you and what’s holding you back.

Bad habits in the workplace are common and can be detrimental to your career. Bad behavior and immaturity can cost you that next promotion or keep your friends from referring you to employers for that next great opportunity.

An August 2015 study from CareerBuilder found that 77 percent of workers have witnessed some type of childish behavior among colleagues in the workplace.

Your habits and behaviors are extensions of your character, so what you do regularly and almost involuntarily can either be favorable or detrimental to your career growth.

Start to notice and develop a sense of self-awareness to avoid falling into bad habits like tardiness, negativity, using bad body language like slouching and not making eye contact, showing a lack of confidence, and throwing temper tantrums when emotions start controlling you.

These bad habits can be broken with some simple changes to your everyday life. Here are three good habits you can start developing now to improve the quality of your life and help you succeed in your career:

This post was updated to bring you the most current tips and information in October 2020.

Goals are powerful tools for all of us — they act as a compass to help us navigate our way toward success. Setting them can be a challenge, and sticking to them and staying on course, is even more difficult.

Job seekers need to set career goals as they take steps on their journey through the job market. It helps with finding a good employer who will be a strong fit for them. A 2017 study from Gallup found that employees who can link their goals to the organization’s goals are 3.5 times more likely to be engaged.

Good news — sharing goals leads to better opportunities because it gives potential employers a vision for the candidate’s future and shows their motivation. But this all starts with creating a strategy of goal setting.

This is how you can help your candidates set career goals and find their target:

Hiring practices have changed dramatically over recent years, with several new trends completely redesigning the recruiting landscape. A major part of the hiring process is the interview stage, which has also seen an influx of different types and formats.

No two interview processes are created equal. You have the traditional face-to-face interview, the phone interview, the video interview, the panel interview — the list goes on and on. This can be overwhelming, especially considering that 52 percent of interviewers make their decision about a candidate in the first five to fifteen minutes of the interview, according to an April 2015 study from the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

How can you help job seekers prepare for all these interview variations? There are several obvious mottos like “be honest” and “dress to impress” that candidates can practice, but let’s take a look at interview tips that address common mistakes for each type of interview:

When you find the right job, you might be willing to do anything to get it. Even tell a white lie. After all, one little fib never hurt anyone.

Not to sound like your mother, but lies always catch up with you. Whether it’s during the job interview or a few months after you’ve been hired, chances are someone is going to figure things out. And depending on how big of a lie you told, it could cost you that perfect job.

Here are four common white lies that interviewers can see right through, and what to say instead:

One of the toughest parts about getting a job is finding the right job in the first place. With so many job postings, it’s a frustrating and exhausting struggle to find the positions that are truly the best fit.  

We understand that sifting through job openings can be a tedious and drawn-out process that often feels like a waste of time. So, how can you feel more efficient in the job search process?

Here’s what you should always consider when looking through job openings: