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.

What are the true incentives of a referral program today? Most people would answer this question by saying “cash for hire,” or some sort of referral hire award. Offering rewards for successful hires has become the norm within employee referral programs today. According to careerXroads, 88% of companies with referral programs are currently providing rewards. However rewarding just successful hires is probably the biggest obstacle to employee engagement with referrals.

The reasons why so many companies are seeing a drop in engagement are because the chance of winning a reward is just too low, and because typical employee referral programs today have a lag of 4-5 months from the day a candidate is referred, to the day the referral reward is distributed. This structure lacks incentives, and leaves employees with the feeling that their referrals have disappeared into a black hole.

The solution? Create a program built around multiple channels of recognizing employees, including incentives for quality referrals, as well as rewards for successful hires. Let’s take a look at three different ways to do this.

1) Provide Immediate Recognition  

Immediately recognizing the actions of your employees is a great way to solve the “black hole” problem. This recognition is a form of positive feedback, and will leave employees feeling appreciated, which will further encourage them to participate.

Reward employees who perform certain desired actions in your referral program. For example, before you launch, offer a small token of appreciation to employees who join within a week. You could also offer movie tickets, or a dinner for two, to every employee who refers 3 candidates.

Having predetermined rewards for short term, easily achievable goals, allows employees to feel that their actions are being recognized now, much before a hire takes place. This quick feedback is necessary to increasing engagement since employee actions are noticed right away, which further incentivizes them to participate.

2) Reward Quality Effort

Rewarding quality effort is key to making sure you are receiving high quality candidates. One way to do this is to distribute points based on different actions that your employees take. Make sure to differentiate points given out so that you reward quality over quantity.

Making these points redeemable for prizes is a great way to further increase engagement. Create a system that allows employees to cash in their points for prizes. For example, 800 points could be redeemable for movie tickets, but 15,000 points could be worth an iPad mini! In addition to offering differentiated prizes, advertise them throughout your office. This will remind your employees to participate daily. Not sure what to offer? Ask your employees for advice!

Award more points for the actions you value the most. This type of incentive around referral programs is great for engagement because it encourages what is most important to you, high quality referrals.

3) Create Friendly Competition

Friendly competition is fun and exciting for everyone, plus it can encourage teamwork within your company. Creating competitions within your referral program will greatly increase participation, as it will allow employees to work towards a common or individual goal. These competitions can range anywhere from a company wide raffle, to a competition between departments or offices.

Friendly competitions are a great part of incentivizing your referral program since they are great at getting people to talk about referrals and start a buzz amongst your office. These types of incentives are also important in the long term since you can switch them up to surprise your employees and keep things interesting!

These ideas mentioned are only some of the ways to use incentives in your referral program. Don’t be afraid to get creative, the more effort you put in, the more you will be rewarded. The key to keeping participation levels high is creating different incentive programs that quickly recognize efforts. Giving your employees the satisfaction of ongoing rewards and different incentives will keep your referrals at an ultimate high level!

 Ziv Eliraz is the Founder and CEO of Zao.com, a software that supercharges referrals. Want to learn more about incentives in employee referral programs? Download our Ebook on Gamification for Employee Referral Engagement.

SmartRecruiters is the Hiring Platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires.

 Yes, we naturally want to share information & experiences that we find interesting in our lives.  Consumer marketing and mainstream media get it – thus, the “social sharing” buttons such as Facebook’s “thumbs up” ‘Like’ recommendation.  So, if they get it… why does it seem to be such a leap to really do more than lip-service for Mainstream Recruitment?  Why do we not put more of an emphasis on it in our recruitment marketing and application process?

I can practically hear the Recruiters, HR Leaders, and Business Executives reading this thinking to themselves, “But, wait a minute… we DO put an emphasis on referrals! We have a referral program, after all!!”

So, in response, let me say that simply saying you have something doesn’t mean much.  Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between existence v. utilization v. effective return.  For a social referral program to be truly effective; it must be constantly monitored and marketed.  This means more than putting a poster up in the breakroom & circulating emails saying that you pay cash bonuses for sending prospective employees HR’s way.  This means embracing a whole new way of thinking, starting with your expectations of social recruiting.

• Aim High:  A referral program, when correctly designed & implemented, should make up at least 50% of your candidate source.  Frankly, a well-executed program requires far too much effort to receive a third or less in returns; so, if the bar is set there to start with, then it’s likely to end up being a frustrating endeavor for all involved.

• Keep Standards:  Return metrics aren’t the only bar that should be set high. Ever heard the phrase “Junk in, Junk out?”  If you allow employees to put anyone in as a social referral; then chances are that the quality of referrals you’ll see over time will diminish.  For starters, the “everyone’s in” philosophy actually promotes throwing names against the wall to see what sticks more than it does having employees do some vetting for potential fit.  Over time, this can discourage the recruiting staff from paying referrals the attention they should be due.  Instead, encourage employees to carefully consider their potential referral’s skill sets against the position(s) being referred for and overall company fit.  To reinforce this company culture, consider making your ‘referral rewards’ a sliding scale program that’s balance is determined by success of previous referrals.  The better the past referrals, the farther along the scale the employee will go.

• Get Proactive:  Never lose sight of the fact that your referral program is a Marketing program.  A fundamental flaw of many referral programs is that nearly immediately after launch; they shift into a reactive “hurry up and wait” mode.  This is never going to bring the results you’d want to see – your employees aren’t there to recruit; so, they’ll get preoccupied with their job and forget until someone else brings it up.  Make that someone you by:

Regularly switching up the internal promotions/rewards for employees to continue to entice/attract participation

 

1. Include your ‘High Potentials’ on another level: “birds of a feather,” and all that jazz – if you have a profile that fits, it stands to reason they might know more people like them to refer in to be co-workers!

 

1. Share Program Successes – By regularly communicating the # of hires, $ saved, and $ paid back to the company through the social referral program; you are encouraging participation. This is social recruiting. It won’t be long before people start thinking, “if Bob can refer 2 people and look like a rockstar for helping the company – surely I can, too!”

 

Social Referrals

 Crystal Miller creates great Talent Marketing and Social Recruitment Programs at M3 Talent Consulting in Dallas. As an advocate for proactive social media in recruiting, she works as the Co-Host of #TalentNet weekly Radio Chat on Twitter/Focus w/ Talent Net Live. Crystal believes, “Candidate first.”