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Talent knows talent
Seven ways to make your employee referral program successful By Muhammad Younas
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t is very common for companies and organizations, regardless of size or industry, to use a mix of different hiring tools and methods to find their ideal hire. Depending on the specific vacancy or the career level, certain companies opt to use a CV search tool, traditional job postings, assisted sourcing services, or even a fully branded career portal with an applicant tracking system. But most of the time, companies complement these technologies with an internal referral program. Employee referral programs are, in fact, a leading tool for talent sourcing based on the resulting candidate quality and retention rates. According to the Bayt.com Hiring Practices in the Middle East and North Africa Survey, employee referral was among the most popular methods for recruitment, especially for managerial positions, where 38% of employers said they use this approach. This is why a well-executed referral program can do wonders for your talent pipeline. Nurturing a system to obtain
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When there’s a company opening, you don’t want to settle after announcing it once. To keep your employees actively thinking about it, provide them with regular updates about the progress, but without spamming their inboxes.
To promote your program, publicize your incentives and keep showing your employees what’s in it for them.
employee referrals should be a top priority for every business due to many reasons: referred hires dramatically reduce cost-of and time-to hire, referred hires generally exhibit a higher culture-fit and truly reflect your employer brand, among other benefits. Setting up a referral program is also not that complicated. You’ll first need to come up with a goal or a vision for the program. For instance, are you attempting to have more senior candidates in your pipeline? Are you trying to increase your workforce diversity? Are you trying to cut hiring costs? After you determine the objectives of the program, set up a very simple and user-friendly referral system, communicate to your employees what the program is all about, and bring it to life. But wait, that’s not all! In fact, coming up with an employee referral program is the easiest step to accomplish. What your program’s success truly depend on is how it is promoted and received by your existing employees. Once you’ve set up a killer program, you know right away that it’s time to start promoting it within your team to give it momentum. Here are a few ways you can ensure that your employee referral program stays on top for your employees’ minds whenever a new vacancy pops up: 1. Educate your hiring managers Be it new joiners or existing employees, it is crucial that you educate everyone in your company on the benefits that an employee referral program provides for them and the company in general. Highlight the various tools that they can use to achieve these benefits. Data works best because it gives an objective view of the program’s returns. Share stats and figures with the executive team members, hiring managers, and directors. Present cases of companies that have truly thrived because of a good employee referral program. Show how the program is projected to influence your timeto-hire, cost-of-hire, retention rates, and employee turnover if you opt for a model that has worked for similar competitor companies. Some figures to get you started: • 88% of employers rate employee referrals as the leading source for quality hires. • 70% of referred hires exhibit higher retention rates compared to employees hired from other sources. After educating your senior employees and obtaining their buy-in, encourage them to share this information with their team