Does your company have an effective employee referral management system? According to this Employee Referral Infographic, recruitment from employee referrals has increased from 18 percent to 33 percent since 2000, and in top performing companies, nearly half of employees were hired through employee referrals.
Employee referrals are one of the most effective ways to find and hire new candidates who will work well in your company culture and have the skills that you require. It’s important to the success of any business that the employee referral system in place is working to benefit your business as a whole.
So, how can you improve your existing employee referral management system so that it functions as an effective tool in your business?
Creating an employer brand for your employee referral management program is a great way to make it stand out. With its own logo and social media pages, you can attract the right kind of audience – those who are looking for a job or who are interested in promoting your open positions as part of an employee referral program.
The easier it is for employees and those in their network to apply for a job or recommend others, the more useful and effective your employee referral management system becomes. An integrated recruiting platform that combines the power of modern applicant tracking with employee referral management capabilities presents unique advantages. Referring jobs and sharing the progress of candidates with referring employees becomes easy in an integrated environment. It also makes life easier for the HR organization by making the necessary information available to employees quickly and without any extra effort.
Remember that employee referrals can play a big role in finding the right people for your company. However, in order to make an employee referral program successful, you must communicate referring guidelines and any incentives very clearly to all your employees. A successful program will follow through with promises, communicate with employees and candidates, and keep all parties in the loop when it comes to the current status of the referral. The right recruitment software can ensure that the right information is communicated quickly to the respective stakeholders.
If you want your employee referral program to be a success, you might need to provide a little bit of extra motivation for those involved.
What types of incentives does your organization offer employees and new hires who work at your company? These could be cash incentives, vacation time, gift cards or perhaps even a premium parking spot! These kinds of incentives make up your company culture, and they can attract the kind of people you want at your company.
What do you offer to employees who make successful referrals, or to those who are hired through the referral program who stay with your company? What about those who share jobs with their friends and social networks? There may be a reward payment for successfully referring a new hire who is successful at the company for a set period of time or, for other distinct milestones. With the right applicant tracking system, it will be easy to track and reward employees who are participating in the program.
At some organizations, other kinds of motivation could be more effective, especially when you need to hire a new candidate quickly. Instead of offering incentives based on the candidate’s performance, initiate a contest to encourage employees to share the job posting on social media and forward it to those in their network who they deem most qualified. Tracking employee effort in the referral process is easy to do with an integrated recruitment platform like Simplicant.
Encouraging your employees to share your company’s open positions on their social media accounts is one of the best ways to increase your social media presence, and to quickly reach a lot of candidates in your employee’s networks, including those who your employees may not know are looking for a job. An effective recruitment software platform will incorporate social media sharing into your referral program.
In addition to promoting your open position with a high quality job description, presenting your employer brand as an ideal fit for the type of people you are looking for can make a huge difference in attracting the talent you want. Share some of the unique benefits of working at your company. Do you offer a learning environment that can be ideal for fresh graduates? Are you known for providing an excellent vacation option? Or perhaps you pride yourself in providing a great work-life balance.
Share this information on social media as well as through your employee referral program.
It is often a daunting task to meticulously manage and track each and every step of the hiring process. Without a proper system in place, it’s a lot of manual work to create and post a job description, share it on social media, communicate it with your employees, promote your company culture. Managing and tracking employee referrals without a modern employee referral system is often hard to implement successfully. Make sure that you are using an integrated recruiting platform with the right employee referral management software that makes it easy for employees to refer from wherever they are using any device – mobile, tablet or desktop.
Sometimes, overwhelming your employees or their networks with too many positions at one time can backfire. Select a manageable number of positions for promoting through the employee referral program. Move quickly to the next batch of open positions when you have received a certain number of referrals.
Make sure that you follow through with what you say. It is important to recognize those who successfully recommend a person for a position with your company, especially if you want to encourage others to do the same in the future.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash