ChristianAs a business owner one effective way to find new talent for your company is to set up an employee referral program utilizing your existing workforce. By offering your current employees a reward program for new recruit referrals you can easily expand your available recruiting network which in turn speeds up the process for finding new talent for important positions.
In order to have a successful employee recruiting referral program it’s crucial that your existing employees be satisfied with the program. This way they’ll be sure to refer quality candidates which will improve the hiring process as oppose to hindering it.
The following ideas are important to keep in mind when creating the right incentive plan for employees to refer new candidates to your business for potential employment:
- Be responsive – If an employee refers a potential candidate, provide a response within at least 72 hours so both the candidate and the current employee knows the referral was placed and received by the HR department.
- Discourage spam –Set in place referral submission guidelines. Only allow a certain number of referrals to be submitted in a specific time frame. Depending on the growth rate of your company, the demand for new hires will vary. Make sure the referral guidelines you put in place accommodate your hiring needs.
- Provide rewards immediately – Be sure not to delay the payment or incentive provided to employees that have successfully referred hired candidates. This should be done as quickly as possible to not only reward the employee for finding a great candidate, but to motivate and encourage other employees to send in their referrals.
- Encourage referral cards – Have your HR and Marketing department come up with an attractive card that can be given out by your employees to people they feel will be a good match for your company. On the card provide the necessary information required for the candidate to submit their resume. Be sure to include a way for HR to know that the incoming resume is from your employee referral program.
- Pay an adequate reward – Make sure the referral reward is generous but not so much so that it distracts an employee from concentrating on their regular jobs.
- Encourage HR to utilize employee referrals – Be sure to include specific rewards for HR departments that find and recruit talent using the employee referral program. Otherwise they may pass up perfectly good candidates because they’re not incentivized to use this channel for hiring.
If your business is in an active growth period, make sure your employees can contribute by finding the best talent available to take your company to the next level. Get started today by implementing an incentivized and well thought out employee referral program. Keep in mind the points above to ensure everyone involved is motivated and on the same page, from HR to your office staff.
Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
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