Real talent acquisition requires more effort than just posting open roles on job boards. To find those rock stars your team needs, you have to go above and beyond.
Here, we’re highlighting an effective recruitment strategy that yields qualified candidates, one that is often overlooked or simply forgotten.
Join us as we give you 12 employee referral program ideas.
They are designed to encourage your employees to participate in the recruitment process, leading to a more successful organization.
1. Encourage Diversity Through Referrals
Companies looking for ways to bring more diversity into their organization should consider tapping into their employee network.
Most professionals have a network of peers; by inviting your employees to comb their roster of connections or keep an eye out for a candidate who meets the desired criteria, you can easily leverage who they know.
A common method of incentivizing employees is to provide monetary rewards or additional perks — such as vacation days — for successful referrals.
Companies seeking to add more diversity to their organization use this strategy to encourage their employees to seek diverse candidates.
This tactic is used by well-known brands like Pinterest, Accenture, and Intel. These companies all incentivize employees who participate in the referral process, which results in hiring more diverse employees.
For those excited about using this recruitment strategy, it’s important to first provide your employees with some context. They should understand how diversity strengthens existing teams and how innovation is greatly enhanced when people from different walks of life collaborate.
By now, most industries know that diversity within the workforce is crucial to overall success, boosting creativity and problem-solving. Diverse teams consistently outperform their homogenous counterparts.
Once they grasp the value of diversity, your employees will be excited to play a part in enhancing company culture, aligning it with overall values.
2. Host an Open House
Organizing an open house is a great strategy to expedite a successful employee referral program. You get the chance to welcome candidates and get right down to the nitty-gritty of who you are and what you do.
Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have all been highly successful in using this strategy. It’s an excellent way to showcase your work environment and culture. The open house itself can even be tailored towards a specific goal.
For example, companies who hope to strengthen their teams by increasing diversity can use this platform to:
- Highlight the inclusivity of their culture
- Draw attention to their DEI initiatives
- Explain how they give back to the community
The open house can be scheduled around an event, such as a massive annual conference everyone within the industry attends. You can encourage employees to invite the top talent they meet at the event to stop by the open house and learn more.
In addition, your employees are free to invite their industry friends, acquaintances, and other people in their network they believe may have a lot to offer.
Make sure that open positions you’re actively looking to fill are discussed during the open house, and gather information on promising interested candidates — even if the positions they’d qualify for aren’t currently open.
For employee leads that result in successful hires, you can offer cash payouts or other incentives to get them to invite promising peers to the event.
3. Encourage Employees to Share Open Positions on Social Media
Chances are, your employees are well-connected on their respective social platforms.
If there’s a job opening or you’re looking to expand, offer a reward (like a gift card) to teammates who share the vacant positions you’re looking to fill on LinkedIn and other social sites.
Encourage those who share the job opportunities to add a blurb of their own to the post talking about things like:
- Why they love working for the company
- Some tantalizing insight into a big, exciting project that’s on the cusp of being launched
If they aren’t sure what to include, you can provide them a template to use when sharing the open position on their socials.
4. Create Tiered Referral Systems
Creating tiered referral systems is a great way to incentivize employees and engage them in the recruitment strategy and hiring process.
Here’s how it works:
For the first successful referral an employee makes, they earn a certain amount. If they make a second successful referral, they earn even more. For example, the first tier could yield the employee a $200 bonus. The second could be $500, the third $800, and so on.
The progressive bonus increase and gamification aspect both serve as motivating factors, encouraging and incentivizing employees to continuously be on the lookout for high-quality candidates.
Dropbox, Tesla, Airbnb, PayPal, and many others have successfully used this approach to increase employee referrals.
5. Track Employee Referrals
Another fun tactic is encouraging team members to refer promising candidates through another gamification-style strategy. This one involves tracking and ranking top referrers over time and offering the winner — the person with the most successful referrals — a large payout, vacation, or other worthy incentive.
Similar to the tiered referral system, this option works really well if you have multiple vacancies to fill and want swift access to the talent pool.
6. Offer to Reward Initial Candidate Submission
It can be disheartening for employees when their referral doesn’t work out, and they end up with nothing.
By choosing to reward employees based on candidate submission, they still get something. It can be something minor, such as a voucher to a popular restaurant or a modest monetary reward.
Encouraging current employees to refer potential candidates by offering a small reward (even if the person isn’t hired) is a great way to say thank you, we appreciate your efforts.
7. Create Team Referral Challenges
There’s nothing quite like a little healthy competition between teams. Pitting teams against one another in a referral challenge can be a great recruitment strategy — and a lot of fun.
The team members can pool their resources and work together to see if they know anyone who could be a potential asset.
It’s important to first be clear about what qualities you’re looking for in a new hire, and explain that to each team.
Maybe you’re looking for more diversity or someone with particular skills that could lend themselves well to the organization. The goal is to find highly qualified and talented individuals, so make the criteria you’re looking for abundantly clear.
For fairness, be a stickler and insist that each referred candidate undergo the same interview process. Be careful not to let nepotism or any other factors influence decision-making.
8. Incentivize Current Employee Growth
Employees will sing your praises and attract potential new hires if you give them a reason to do so.
Bonuses, 401K’s, generous benefit options, and an enviable vacation policy are fantastic, but so is incentivizing employee growth.
When it comes to recruiting for new positions, why not consider your own employees?
You get to help them grow, nurturing and shaping them into the type of leader you need.
Your employee gets to benefit from the support — both from what they learn and also from generally feeling that their success and career growth are important to the company as well.
Supporting employee growth by offering a continuous learning reward motivates employees to remain engaged.
Promoting from within is excellent as well, as they will likely tell their network that this is something the company practices.
Encouraging growth within employees is also shown to:
- Increase retention rates
- Elevate morale
- Reinforce your company’s reputation
9. Compensate Referring Employee and Referred Employee
To aid in both retention and new employee referrals, some companies provide a cash reward or other incentive to both the referring employee and the referred candidate. Usually, this bonus shows up at around the six-month mark.
This is motivating for each individual involved. Current employees can let their qualified friends know about this policy, getting them excited about the new opportunity — and the bonus.
10. Gift a Charitable Donation
For companies who really want to make a difference, there’s always the option to provide the referring employee with two choices: they can receive a cash bonus for a successful referral, or choose to have the funds gifted to a charity of their choice.
If they decide to donate the financial lump sum, create a policy where the company matches that donation.
11. Showcase Success Stories
Give successful hires and the referring employee an opportunity to share their experience.
Hearing it from both perspectives is a fun, engaging way to help motivate current employees. Offer tips, strategies, and insights into how they can use their network to help with recruitment efforts and net a bonus as a result.
12. Tap into Professional Networks
Most professionals are involved in organizations solely dedicated to their current field. These organizations typically allow them to network, offer educational opportunities, and keep members current on new developments and trends within the industry.
For example, Obsidi® is a resource for Black tech professionals. We’re dedicated to serving our more than 100,000 and growing members through networking, education, and game-changing, next-level employment opportunities.
