Candidate referral programs can be a valuable resource for any organization looking to attract top talent. Not only do referred candidates often have a higher success rate of being hired and staying with the company longer, but employee referral programs also cost less and are faster than other recruitment methods. However, implementing a successful referral program requires careful planning and consideration. In this blog post, we will explore a few tips for successfully implementing a candidate referral program. By following these best practices, you can effectively tap into a valuable and relatively untapped candidate pool.
Make it public, shout about it, make it known
Sounds obvious right? To put it on your website and make it known that you reward those who help you out? All too often we speak to agencies who have a referral scheme, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at their website or social media. Considering some recruitment agencies make >40% of placements through referrals, it might be worth posting to your blog about it at the very least.
Tell them what it’s worth to them
As a recruitment business owner you know what the acquisition cost of a successful candidate, and unless you’re playing in a market/industry in oversupply, it is a much higher amount that you would like. A referral scheme is an opportunity for you to reduce that cost as well as reaching passive candidates who you would never have been able to reach previously. So put a number on it, is it worth $250? $500? $2000? Putting a real‘dollar’amount on your referral scheme will incentivise your audience to make that referral. They will know the right candidate for the role, the question here is can they muster the effort to make that introduction? Put the right incentive on the referral and the outcome is more likely to be a yes.
Keep your referrers informed
Give them quarterly emails about your roles, examples of referrers who have done well through referring candidates to you and always, always thank them for their help. For successful referrals were commend this is done either in person or over the phone. No software can replicate the appreciation felt when someone picks up the phone to offer a sincere ‘thank you.’
What if you wanted to supercharge your referral process?
Put it on your Job Board
Think about it, when your prospective candidates are looking through the roles on your website it is very likely that they are looking at roles close to their skill set / experience, these same candidates are likely to know a lot of other similar candidates to themselves. So an ‘Account Manager’ in FinTech, might know the perfect ‘Account Exec’ for that role that just appeared to them when they searched for FinTech on your job board
Yep there’s more, we can go even further
Gamification – Consultant and Referrer’s
Referral transparency
Social & Mobile sharing
Full ATS integration
If you made it this far through this article and are really interested in maximising your potential using candidate referrals it is time for you to book a demo with referi
