Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire

Tips for Making Your Employee Referral Program Work For You

When it comes to recruiting efforts, your current employees are often your best assets. They know exactly what the company is like, and may have an idea about the kind of person who would fit well in the organization. When you reward your employees for bringing in new talent, they benefit financially and you get to enjoy a highly talented staff. So how do you make sure that your employee referral program is really working?

Keep it simple

Employees want to better your company and want to receive the financial reward that comes with doing it; they don’t want to have to jump through hoops to participate though. For this reason, you’ll want to keep your employee referral program simple. It shouldn’t require training or an extensive amount of work, otherwise no one will want to get involved.

Get mobile

In order to keep it simple, the program should be able to be accessed on a smartphone. Your employees need to be able to connect when they’re out at a restaurant talking with friends who might be a good fit, Having to go through complicated paperwork or computer programs will only discourage people from partaking, thus hurting the success of the program.

Use social media

One of the easiest ways to spread the word about jobs to potential candidates is by allowing your employees to easily share the information about the job with their social networks. When they can easily tell a qualified Facebook friend about the opening, the entire process becomes seamless. This is also helpful, as a friend of a friend may find the posting and inquire about the position, even if they are not close enough with the employee to have found out about it otherwise.

Give an incentive

While your employees may truly care about helping the company and bettering your staff, they’re busy. This means they’re probably not going out of their way to recruit unless there’s at least a little something in it for them. Every company does it differently, though a small cash bonus seems to be standard. This kind of incentive gives people the motivation to put in some extra work recruiting, even when they’re not on the clock.

Let employees get honest about their referrals

While it’s great to get a recommendation from a current staff member, they need to be able to elaborate in order to really bring value when it comes to recruiting. It’s not enough to say the person they’re recommending is qualified for the job. They need to have the chance to tell you how and why they can better the company. Give them the chance to do this in an honest, confidential setting to add more power to their recommendations.

Do you have an employee referral program in place? How do you make it work most effectively?

Lauren Levine

Lauren Levine is a copywriter/blogger who contributes to a number of magazines and websites including The Frisky, USA Today, and others. She also authors her own blog called Life with Lauren. She loves cooking, anything on the E! network, and is trying to convince herself that running isn't so bad.