Put your referral program into overdrive with this step by step guide (plus templates for outreach)!

If you don’t use referrals, you’re missing out on a killer opportunity to pour some rocket fuel on your recruitment process.

Yes, inbound and outbound channels yield amazing hires.

But referral hires…

• Have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate at 40 percent.
• Run with the company longer, with 46 percent staying over one year and 45 percent over two years.
• Cut the time-to-hire to 29 days from 55.

There’s more…

• Industry giants like Google, Intel, and Accenture do referral recruitment.
• Thought leaders like Patrick Burke (Pebble), Tim Diss (Facebook), and Theresa Singh (Asana) also use it.

Now, do you want to access hiring excellence? Strap in. This is going to be a fun ride.

Put Lead Generation on Autopilot

Imagine a constant pipeline of qualified candidates… wouldn’t that be nice? The good news is you’re about to learn how to make this happen.

Spotlight Open Positions

Employees kind of know what internal roles are open and they kind of know who might be a good fit. The result is underwhelming. Passive lead generation does not a superb hiring program make. However, you can flip things around and start highlighting open positions at all-hands meetings and in a company newsletter. It’ll help employees connect the dots.

Go on LinkedIn

An average employee has 100 or so LinkedIn connections. Put another way, if you have 50 employees, you can reach 5000 potential hires without lifting a finger. Here’s how: Encourage employees to like your job posts and link their LinkedIn accounts with the company’s page (see how). It’ll help employees stay on top of things and help your openings gain traction.

Use an Internal Jobboard.

If you’re a massive company with offices sprinkled across the globe, internal jobboards can offer a lifeline and make passive referral hiring Hulk-level strong.

Skip the Referral Bonus and Focus on Culture

You may want to lightsaber cash incentives. Aleksandra Włodarczyk, HR Specialist /Recruiter at ResumeLab explains why: “If you promise employees $1K for a successful referral, they won’t care if their friends make a great fit. They’ll want the bonus.”

However, If employees feel they work in a hip company, they’ll naturally want to intro others.

Tap into Employee Networks

You’ve made it to the juicy part. Put your party pants on because you’re about to discover a magical path to next-level referral recruiting. Consider making this part of onboarding. Remember, if you don’t sit down with a new employee to fish out referrals, you’ll walk right past low-hanging fruit.

Need proof? PURE (American property insurance company) gets a whopping 40-60 percent of hires via early referral. You can too. Here’s how:

1) Create a spreadsheet.

2) Sit together and comb through an employee’s network on LinkedIn.

The key is to ask ultra-specific questions: We’re looking for a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write high-quality guest posts for major outlets]. Do you know anyone like that in [Chicago]?

3) Extract the basic info.

Record the connection’s name and LinkedIn URL by dropping them into the spreadsheet.

4) Fish out email addresses.

To do this, you must first get the staffer to login to LinkedIn, click ‘See connections’, and do a first-degree network search.

5) Once you pinpoint a potential hire, fire up their profile and click ‘See contact info’.

Bingo!

In the end, you should end up with something like this:

Note: You can mine employees’ networks once/twice a year without limiting yourself to new hires. People amass new connections regularly so it’s best to stay plugged in.

Do Outreach Like a Pro

You’ve got a golden list of stellar talent. Next, you need to reach out and sway them to the dark side. Problem? It’s a sucky manual task (especially if you end up with a list of 50+ contacts), but it doesn’t have to be if you use outreach automation tech that lets you create templates, track opens, and schedule follow-ups.

That said, you can do things manually. All it takes is some elbow grease and time.

1) First outreach… time for some heavy-duty action.

When you open the first email, be sure it includes:

• A note that you’re reaching out because their friend thinks they’re a great fit.
• What your company does.
• A link to the job ad.
• Heavy personalization (no one likes generic messages).

Need an example?

Hi [Marianne],

My name is [Max], and I’m a [content team lead] here at [The Boring Company].

Your friend [Josh] is on my team, and he says you’re killing it when it comes to [writing delicious content that drips with value].

I like people who can [write] like that, so I wanted to reach out and say hi.

[The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded by Elon Musk.]

You can learn about our values and culture here: [Link]

Now, I’d love to have you on my team as a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write about flamethrowers]. You can learn about the role here.

Is that something you’d be interested in?

Thanks,
[Max]

2) Follow-Up

If there’s no reply after three days then it’s time to circle back and give a nudge.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Just a quick follow-up in case you missed my last email.

Like I said, your friend [Josh] says you’re a rockstar when it comes to [writing].

With that in mind, I’d LOVE you to join my team.

Details about the role. [Link]

Our values and culture. [Link]

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks a million,

[Max]

3) When you get a YES, ask the referral to have a little phone chat to screen them.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Thanks for getting back – I’m super pumped.

Will you be available for a quick phone chat on [October 5th] at [2 PM]?

Thanks,
[Max]

4) On the off chance, it’s a no….

It sucks when you get a message like that, but you can turn things around and ask the referral to pass the details about the opening to their friends. This will help you push the info along and potentially find awesome talent.

Example:

[Marianne],

That’s a HUGE pity, really.

Is there any chance you could pass along the info about our opening for the position of a [Content Marketing Specialist] to your friends and colleagues?

About The Boring Company. [Link]

Details about the role. [Link]

Sending a mail pigeon with a thank-you note your way!

Thanks,

[Max]

So, what do you think? Do you do referral recruiting? How do you use employees’ networks to acquire top-value asset? Let us know @smartrecruiters.

Understand the practices keeping your department stuck in a reactive-hiring hamster wheel.

In the countryside of Geneva lives the largest scientific experiment humans have ever undertaken. Born from the rubble of WWII, The European Council for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, operates on the principles of peace, transparency, and cross-cultural cooperation. The 27-kilometer facility is home to 10,000+ scientists of over 100 nationalities, all working to deepen humanity’s understanding of our world through particle physics.

Every second on CERN’s campus marks another 11,000 protons colliding at 99.999…percent the speed of light in the world’s largest particle accelerator. But it can’t happen without the people. And that’s what worried James Purvis, Head of HR at CERN when he entered recruitment at the lab 12 years ago – no one was applying.

He realized quickly that CERN would have to level up on candidate experience to start seeing an influx of candidates but there was another crucial element missing from their strategy – they needed to lay a talent pipeline in order to keep pace with the company’s roadmap – a plan stretching 35 years into the future.

After considering the company prospectus and turn-over/average-employee-tenure data, and comparing that information to labor trends, it became clear vocational workers in the form of maintenance technicians, not high-level scientists, would become the most difficult roles to source in the future. In response, CERN launched a comprehensive training program with an advertising campaign targeting recent high school graduates (see video below of James speaking at Hiring Success 18 – Berlin Edition).

This targeted campaign was extremely successful, and CERN now has a deep bench of technicians waiting to come into the ranks!

So what can you, as a recruiter, take from CERN’s journey to hiring success?

Yes, it’s true that this organization is exceptional, yet their methods for building their candidate pipeline are largely universal.

Looking to these scientific pioneers, recruiters can accelerate out of reactive recruiting and into proactive talent acquisition (TA.) To get you started, we’ve outlined some of the most common errors recruiters make when building and maintaining a candidate pipeline, as well as what to do instead.

1.

Not using your data…

Data analytics sounds like scary, esoteric stuff. So, think of it as getting to know your company. Talk to department heads about the reqs they foresee for the next quarter or next year. Look into the records to learn the yearly rollover rate and average employee tenure.

Armed with these simple data points, you can start predicting the personnel needs for the coming year and organizing a recruiting strategy.

2.

Making plans for tomorrow based on the reality of today…

You can’t use a fixed-model to forecast a TA strategy. That is to say, just because you don’t have a shortage of ‘sales associates’ today doesn’t mean you should ignore that pipeline. No candidate pool is guaranteed. Economic fluctuations, tech innovations, and legislative changes will inevitably affect whom you hire, how you hire them, and what you hire them for. Most of these economic/tech/job trends can be foreseen and planned for today. As we learned from CERN,  it’s a matter of paying attention.

3.

Forgetting about internal talent…

Once an employee is onboarded, it’s easy to forget about them as potential talent. However, internal candidates should always be part of your bench. Internal mobility is a great strategy for both retention and attracting new talent. Fifty-six percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of growth opportunities, and “career growth” is one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers.

Start simple. Create an internal career site that informs current employees about open opportunities. Then, take your strategy to the next level by using AI to identify relevantly skilled workers for you to contact.

4.

Skimping on learning and development (L&D)…

L&D programming directly influences functions like internal mobility. A recent LinkedIn study found that 27 percent of organizations in North America increased their L&D budgets in 2017. This kind of investment makes sense considering the predicted talent shortage, which will impact the technology and financial sectors the most, costing the global economy an estimated $1.31 trillion in lost economic output over the next 12 years.

5.

Reading resumes for job titles instead of skills…

Reviewing resumes from internal candidates is key to L&D/ internal mobility programs, but don’t get distracted by headlines. You must read the fine print to identify employees who have transferable skills and a good knowledge base to be upskilled into open roles.

Similarly, for outside hires, candidates shouldn’t be knocked out because they hail from a disparate industry or job title – it’s all about having the skills to execute the job.

6.

Falling out of touch…

It’s hard to prioritize future hires when you have reqs to fill today. However, if you spend the time building quality talent pools, it’s a shame to see that work go to waste by neglecting them. Nurturing these communities is a key aspect of recruitment marketing.

So, how do you find time for this? It’s not magic, it’s tech! Most TA teams use candidate relationship management systems (CRM) to automate and scale communication, including drip campaigns and branded landing pages.

It’s important to remember recruitment marketing programs are a two-way street. Don’t just push information to potential applicants, make sure they are updating their information and engaging with you as well.

7.

Not using freelancers…

Upwork estimates that 36 percent of the US workforce already freelance, and projects that number will reach 50 percent by 2027, so why not get ahead of the trend?

An active community of contract workers ensures that no project stalls out due to missing talent. These temporary hires can buttress a department while recruiters seek a full-time team member, or they can provide specialized skills that may be too expensive for your company to employ full time.