Employee referral programs are THE most useful and successful way of finding the best candidates for your open job requisitions. Along with your outstanding and informative career site referrals can account for as much as 70% of your hires.
Every bit of data available, and I don’t need to source it for you because I’m sure you’ve seen it time and time again, tells you that referrals represent:
- The best source of new hire quality.
- The best retention rate of new hires.
- The number one source in the volume of hires.
- They represent the fastest time to fill.
- The smallest percentage of applicants but the largest percentage of actual hires.
- Your most productive source of diversity of applicants.
- The lowest rate of terms
Having a well thought out referral plan can make a huge difference to your recruiting. A good employee referral program creates a sense of trust and positive feelings about your organization with you current employees. Employee participation in referral programs is like a morale meter for your company.
The majority of employees that make referrals understand the impact a good reference has on the company and them. No one wants to refer a friend that can’t add value to the team. That would be a horrible reflection on their judgment.
And the flip side is that employees have a negative opinion about their company have no interest in referring their qualified friends for jobs. That could kill a friendship. Friends don’t let friends work for horrible employers.
In the end referral programs are successful because everyone sees the effort as a win-win. Whether you’ve got a bonus or rewards program involved or nothing at all, people want to work with other good people. That makes all the difference in the world to them and the organization. And happy, dedicated employees are active recruitment marketers just waiting for you to engage them in the referral effort.
Don’t leave them hanging. If you don’t have a program, it’s not that difficult or expensive to pull one together. Something that can be automated and assist the recruiter, the referrer, and the referee with making the right job choices and ensuring good communication and follow up throughout the application process.
The upside to a referral program is phenomenal. It does everything you need it to do for your brand, your employee morale, your candidate pipeline, and your bottom line.
I once heard a recruiter saying they needed to “fish where the fish were.” Well, to be honest, a decent and well-executed referral program can have you employees helping you hook the big ones. Help them make a difference for your recruiting effort.
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