building an employee referral program
Post on 19-Oct-2014
2.985 views
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Setting up an employee referral program for small to medium sized companies
Introduction
• Average employee referral programs deliver about 20% of all new hires.
• Great employee referral programs deliver over 50% of all new hires.
• Your employees are already connected to many of the people you want to hire.
• People want to help. They just need some guidance.
Define goals
• Identify the roles you want to fill using referrals.• Define how many new hires through referrals you
aim to achieve and in what time frame.• Convince your CEO/CFO of the benefits.
1
Define rewards
• Will you give employees a reward when candidates are brought to interview or only when they are hired?
• Sample rewards for getting a candidate to interview stage motivates staff and can be a token such as gift cards, movie tickets etc.
• It’s best to pay rewards immediately. Skip the long wait. It’s a huge disincentive.
2
What reward?
• The best rewards to offer depend on your company.• Sometimes it’s recognition.• Sometimes it’s a charitable donation.• Often it’s plain old fashioned cash.• Rewards for hiring a professional are usually in the
region of $600 to $2000.• Experiment to see what works best for your network.
Define your message
• Referrals help employees bring people they like into the company.
• Referrals are a great way to reach people who are not actively looking for work.
• Referrals are usually a better culture fit, stay longer and get productive faster.
• Referral programs help the company hire the right people to get the projects done.
3
Select champions
• Identify well connected employees–Who has 500+ LinkedIn connections?–Who’s active on Twitter?–Who’s likely to have a lot of friends in Facebook?
• Talk to these employees. Tell them about your plan. Get their buy in.
• Roll out a pilot with these pioneers.• They will encourage others to follow.
4
Abandon Prejudice
• You will likely get results you didn’t foresee.• We’ve seen referral programs deliver 90% of
candidates from employees simply adding names into Zartis.
• We’ve seen programs deliver the majority of candidates from Facebook.
• We’ve seen programs deliver the majority of candidates from Twitter (our own, in fact).
All referrals are not created equal
• Social referrals can mean any of the following:– An employee adds a person’s details into Zartis.– An employee invites a specific person to apply
for a role via email or LinkedIn and the person applies.
– An employee posts a public message to LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter that anybody can see and anybody can apply from.
Follow Up Fast
• Zartis flags all candidates that are referrals and shows who referred them.
• Follow up with them within one working day.• Provide feedback to your referring employees.• Not following up or failing to provide feedback will
destroy any referral program.
5
Final thoughts
• You absolutely need CEO buy in and get them to communicate the importance of referrals to all staff.
• Change rewards to keep it fresh.• Random prizes work, e.g. iPad for first employee
that refers a person that’s hired.• People naturally want to help. Set them up for
success.
6
For the CEO or CFO
Why employee referrals are best
• Reach people not actively looking for work • Better culture fit• Lower attrition/higher retention• Up to 75% cheaper than agency fees• Average referral programs deliver 20% of new hires• Best practice programs deliver over 50%• Zartis helps “move the referral needle”
The business case
• Low initial investment• High potential ROI• Proven high success rate/low risk• Short implementation cycle• Clear accountability measures• Creates competitive advantage• Impact on corporate performance
Case StudyDommo – Madrid based ad agency
Case StudyVersion 1 – IT consulting and managed services
Next Steps
We’d love to help your company to grow. To see how we can help you, email [email protected]
Thanks for readingJohn Dennehy