Although there is more than one method to building an effective employee referral program, it’s always interesting to take a look behind the scenes and get an insight into how other businesses have tackled that challenge.
We’ll keep you up to date with any brilliant examples we come across, but here are a few of the latest…
3 brilliant examples of employee referrals
At SalesForce, an American cloud-based software company, they acknowledge both the employee and referred candidate from the moment they are referred. Salesforce has a dedicated recruiting team as well as a chatter community platform in which the employee can communicate with a recruitment expert in real time. They also organise happy hours and social gatherings so recruitment specialists can mingle with employees as well as potential candidates, proving that a social workforce can help develop the company culture and employee retention. Salesforce then offers a variety of referral bonuses such as tickets to sporting events and payment for charitable work within the community. Notably, they not only offer bonus incentives to employees that refer a candidate that goes onto get hired, but they make a point of rewarding employees at each stage of the journey.
In 2017, DigitalOcean a cloud infrastructure provider, implemented an altruistic bonus incentive that brought their participation rate to 43%. For every referred candidate hired, the company not only gave the referring employee a monetary bonus, but also offered a charitable donation paid by the company to the charity of the employee’s choosing. Furthermore, if the employee chose to donate a portion of their monetary bonus, they were given a raffle ticket, that if won, awarded the employee with an all expenses paid trip.
Gaming platform Product Madness found they were at odds with their consumer and employer brand. That coupled with the competitive market for tech talent, posed a challenge to fill their open developer roles. They partnered with Real Links to implement our automated employee referral platform. Product Madness quickly success with the platform in under 12 weeks. With a 25% year on year increase in referral candidates, all developer roles filled and a newly established talent pool of 40,000 candidates.
It’s not difficult to understand the problems with employee referrals, it’s keeping up with the best tech and creative thinking that will set you apart . It’s a brilliant opportunity to spend some time on getting creative with engagement strategies that will keep employees motivated to participate.
