Employee Referrals Archives

How to increase employee referrals in 5 easy steps

29th April 20212nd September 2020 by Sam Davies

88% of employers said that referrals are the #1 best source for above-average applicants. (Source: Dr. John Sullivan research). It’s not news, but most businesses are still facing an uphill battle to increase employee referrals.

Tipping the balance to reach a point where you’re less reliant on external hires to fill every open role, because you’ve got a steady stream of referred candidates topping up your talent pipeline every week is a dream position to be in.

More referred candidates equals less time-to-hire, reduced recruitment costs and usually lower employee turnover.

But, to get to that point you need to consistently test strategies and tactics that ultimately increase the number of referred candidates into your business. Here’s our top 5 – but don’t forget, creativity is critical to driving participation so there will always be more ideas.

1. Automate the referral process

Without blowing our own trumpet early doors, one of the reasons Real Links works so well is it overcomes the very first hurdle that gets in people’s way. Actually referring a candidate. Between not knowing what roles are open to not understanding the process to refer someone, it’s a common bottle neck. Real Link’s unique matching technology automatically identifies skills from your job adverts and matches them with skills from people in your employee’s networks. The employee is sent a notification, and at the click of a button they refer and receive a reward.

2. Nail your rewards

A Real Links survey found that 34% of companies only offer rewards for referrals upon a hire being made with a further 65% once a referred candidate has passed their probation period. That is a long time for an employee to wait to be rewarded. And it’s not only about how long they wait, but the rewards they’re incentivised with. Most organisations are still reliant on monetary rewards, which will be hurting their referral participation.

3. Communicate – all the time

Whether it’s a lack of transparency of the referral process; confusion about how to join in the first place or no up to date information on current open roles there’s a long list of reasons referrals fail, more often than not because of poor communication. Clarity and consistency of communication from the day you launch your referral program is imperative for longevity. A clear communications plan should be a key part of every new referral scheme.

4. Build an employer brand worth shouting about

Ok, it’s not a small task. Especially if you’re starting from scratch, but living by an employer value proposition that’s clear and inspiring for your staff is likely to have the same effect on great talent. We all know it’s important, but when it comes to referrals your employees have got to be committed to your message, and to do that, your message has to be clear and consistent.

5. Embed referrals into your culture

People are your most valuable asset. Each and every person has a profound effect on the long term viability of your business. As an HR or Talent Acquisition team you have a responsibility to convey how vital hiring is to the success of the company and empower employees to want to support you in making their business the best it can be. In this case, by referring great talent.

Succeed with employee referrals – book a demo

3 examples of brilliant employee referral schemes

29th April 20213rd August 2020 by Sam Davies

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

SalesForce

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.

DigitalOcean

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.

Product Madness

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.

Succeed with employee referrals – book a demo

The psychology behind successful referrals

29th April 202116th July 2020 by Sam Davies

The benefits of a successful referral program are widely understood. The challenge is getting employees to participate and engage with your scheme long-term. There are a variety of tactics you can use to help improve engagement, but one of the foundational principles of a great referral scheme is a deep understanding of the psychology behind your employee’s behaviour. Once you understand that, you can begin to tailor your messaging; rewards and gamification strategies to appeal to this unique audience, your workforce.

There are a few psychological models that can help support employee referrals. One of the primary ones is the Hook Model, created by entrepreneur, author, and behavioural economist Nir Eyal, it is a framework designed to understand and drive customer behaviour towards using products or services habitually. Although the model was intended for influencing customer behaviour and product marketing, the Hook framework can be applied to influence the behaviour of your workforce. By learning how to create scenarios that encourage habitual behaviour, you’ll be able to drive long term engagement with your employee referral scheme.

The 4 components of the Hook framework are trigger, action, variable reward, and
investment. When applied to the workforce and referral system, these components make up the process of creating referral habits and rewarding employees.

The trigger is the auto matching technology that allows the employee to
refer to potentially qualified candidates.
The action resulting from the initial trigger will be the referral or social introduction of a candidate or sharing of company content on social channels. The employee can complete these actions in seconds straight from their dedicated dashboard on mobile or desktop.
To find the type of reward that motivates the team, a focus group must be conducted to identify whether the team is motivated by rewards of the tribe, the hunt, or the self. The rewards of the tribe are social rewards like feeling included, appreciated, or accepted. A shout out on social media or any recognition publicly for their valuable participation is an example of a social reward. The rewards of the hunt are physical things, such as gift cards, coupons, or vouchers. Lastly, the rewards of the self concern mastery, competence and completion.
The investment comes once employees have invested time and effort into completing actions within the referral scheme, the investment means they are more likely to repeat the action. The investment component helps to create a loop and our cognitive bias keeps us contributing.The Hook model is one of the most critical to understand when it comes to referrals schemes. Alternatively, the reason that referral systems don’t work tends to be lack of consistency (unclear process), lack of reason for referrals (rewards), and the referral system not being a positive part of the company culture. Ultimately, by applying the Hook Model at the very beginning when you’re planning your scheme, it allows you to create a process that encourages long-term employee engagement.This can help keep hiring costs down, gain reach to more qualified candidates, increase
long-term retention rates, and create a positive and motivating culture within your
company.

Download our guide to the psychology of successful referrals

5 reasons employee referrals will be critical to recovery post COVID-19

29th April 20218th June 2020 by Sam Davies

We’re in the midst of an unprecedented time in global history. Every country has reacted differently to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting impact on local economies and the global landscape is yet to be fully understood.

In the shadow of global economic turmoil modern businesses are once again faced with the challenge of streamlining costs; relying more heavily than ever before on technology to run their business and of course recruitment freezes are widespread across a large number of industries (though as ever some industries continue to succeed and even thrive on the back of this situation).

Employee referrals as a part of a business’ talent acquisition strategy has always been a cost effective and impactful tactic for recruiting high quality candidates with higher engagement and lower attrition rates.

According to a study run in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis: ‘Employee referral schemes are the best talent acquisition strategy during economic uncertainty’

When businesses are attempting to reduce costs and improve efficiency, from a recruitment perspective employee referral when done well is a quicker and cheaper alternative to other recruitment methods. This makes it an important part of business recovery as we all take the first steps towards some sort of normality, BAU and future growth.

In this context we’re talking about fully automated employee referral platforms that import all employee’s social connections from a variety of platforms. Using gamification and competition to engage employees. Implementing micro rewards to keep them active throughout the recruitment process and two way communication so TA teams can proactively suggest referral candidates, as well as employees putting candidates forward.

5 ways effective employee referral will help support business recovery

1. Reducing the cost of recruitment
Employee referral is one of the most cost effective recruitment methods. Especially when a lot of businesses find that large monetary rewards aren’t as motivating for employees as smaller, incremental less expensive rewards. For example, we’ve seen much higher engagement with referral through £50-£250 Amazon vouchers, distributed at different stages of the candidate journey than a £5000 reward for a hire at the end of the process. It also allows you to avoid hefty agency fees and streamline your recruitment budget which will be a critical part of keeping your business lean and prepared for recovery.

2. Keeping talent acquisition and employees engaged and connected
Employee engagement has been a significant challenge for most organisations during COVID-19. Maintaining a high quality talent pipeline and keeping employees connected with each other, as well as talent acquisition teams connected to the business can be enabled through the use of automated employee referral systems; internal competitions and social sharing.

3. Fundamental shift to online
With enforced home working, businesses who perhaps hadn’t implemented flexible and remote working practices have been forced to. Relying on technology to communicate and get things done has rapidly become the new norm. It’s likely that investing in new technology like automated employee referral will now be a lot more effective than pre-COVID as reliance on digital technology is far more widespread and accepted by employers and employees alike.

4. Talent overflow as a result of furlough and redundancy
There’s no two ways about it, there’s going to be a significant spike in unemployment as life begins to return to normal. This will mean a huge influx of talent into the market place at the same time. According to the CIPD, for many organisations placing staff on furlough redundancy is likely to be a very real consideration; if not in the immediate term, then potentially whilst staff are on furlough or when the furlough scheme comes to an end on 30 June 2020. Beyond furlough this will mean a higher volume of applicants for every role advertised, far more time consuming for TA teams. Using employee referral may reduce the volume and increase the quality of applications.

5. High levels of competition for great talent
If you’re fortunate enough to operate in one of the few sectors that will either thrive or be relatively unaffected by Coronavirus, competition for great talent in those sectors will remain high, if not increase as demand for the product or service continues to grow. Within your market place, it’s likely you’ve always faced a competitive hiring environment, but if demand for those skills spikes, adding employee referral to your recruitment armoury will set you apart from the competition, giving you access to a totally unique talent pool.

If you think automated employee referral will help support your business with recovery, why not book a Real Links demo today and find out more. We also offer low cost pilot schemes for up to 100 employees if you’d like to try before you commit.

Tailoring your employer brand for tech…how to get the best talent to want to work for you

29th April 202111th May 2020 by Real Links

Tech talent – often seen as Unicorns of the recruitment game.

61% of CEOs say a shortage of great dev talent is more of a threat to their business than investment; talent acquisition teams anecdotally tell us that they struggle to compete with ‘cooler’ tech businesses on either brand reputation or perks and pay and often, there’s discord between the consumer brand and employer brand.

For example, a slot machine gaming platform that caters for 50+ females with a talent requirement of bright University graduates who demonstrate high levels of skill. It’s highly likely those graduates haven’t even heard of the brand as they’re not the right target audience and amongst their peer group there will be ‘cooler’ better known brands to aspire to work for.

So as a talent acquisition leader under pressure to hire great tech talent for a brand that’s not necessarily got talent throwing themselves at you, what do you do? You start with marketing.

For some businesses, their consumer brand feeds their employer brand, for others, you’re targeting two completely different audiences with different messages.

To add another layer of complication, employer brand can’t be one size fits all. You need to tailor your messaging according to who you’re trying to attract. For example, what interests a management accountant in working for your business will probably be different to the motivations of a tech professional.

In this case we’re focused on hiring tech, so what does your employer brand need to demonstrate to attract the right tech candidates?

Research from the Stack Overflow Insights Report, 2019 highlights:

51% of developers are self-learners, learning to code by themselves through accessible online resources.
Developers working in small companies are more professionally fulfilled than those in large groups
80% of developers work on code outside of work as a hobby
68% of developers consider that the ability to learn new things is more important than salary when considering a new role

What we can deduce from that, as well as anecdotal evidence we’ve gathered is that there are a handful of areas in your employer brand that can be easily tailored to attract a tech audience.

For them it’s all about the projects, what they’ll learn, how much autonomy they have to be creative. If you’ve provided that kind of non linear development with an environment that motivates them, your consumer brand suddenly becomes less of an issue:

Attraction messaging
Communication channels
The candidate experience during assessment and on-boarding
Working conditions
Gamification of projects
Learning and development
Benefits

Based on this research, we’ve developed a check list of ideas that have the potential to change, or promote your employer brand perception in the mind of the tech candidates you’d most love to work with.

Case Studies
Do you have case studies written for tech talent, by tech talent, showcasing your most interesting recent projects?

Dedicated developer blog
Do you have a blog written by tech professionals for tech professionals? Check out this example from Monzo. They talk in detail about specific projects and problems they’ve solved, providing candidates with detailed insight into what a day in the life might look like in your company.

Tailored job adverts
Do you tailor your job adverts in a way that inspires tech talent to take action? A simple ‘about us’ won’t cut it for this audience. Lead with the most unique and attractive aspects of the project or tech stack they’ll be working on. In many cases, incorporating a logo of programming language or software will have far more impact than a text-based explanation. checklist how does your employer brand measure up when it comes to tech talent?

Social proof
Are you leveraging social proof? Using employee testimonials and leveraging employee advocacy from your current tech team will exponentially increase your success. In tech in particular, there’s nothing more powerful than positive insights from their peers. This is one of the reasons employee referral and advocacy platforms work so well in the tech community – because they’re very well networked; share a common passion and spend a lot of time online they’ve got fantastic access to diverse talent pools.

Competitor analysis
Do you conduct regular competitor benchmarking against salaries and benefits to ensure what you’re offering to candidates matches up?

Bespoke benefits
Have you considered redefining your benefits package to attract specific talent? A benefits package for a tech employee may differ from customer service for example – but advertising a bespoke benefits package can really enhance your employer brand.

Promoting your tech stack
Your brand may not be the coolest or most sought after in the tech talent market. But by promoting the virtues of your tech stack, you may just spark the interest of some great talent.

Nonlinear career paths
Tech talent have an appetite for fast moving personal development. They’re often self-taught and motivated by constant learning and development. If this is something you can offer, make it a part of your employer value proposition.

Real time communication
Tech talent are used to using technology to communicate instantly through platforms like Slack. Is your HR or Talent Acquisition team readily available for real time communication with both new talent and existing employees? It’s a real bonus if you are, as it positions the brand as forward thinking and tech savvy in the mind of the people you want to engage with.

There’s a multitude of actions you can take to make your brand more attractive to a tech audience, improving the volume and quality of applications and hires.

For more support on hiring tech talent download our whitepaper or book a demo to find out how employee referral could revolutionise hiring for tech.

Learn more about how you can source tech talent today.

Download the Secret to Hiring Tech Talent White Paper

When it comes to hard to fill developer roles – have you thought about this?

29th April 20212nd April 2020 by Real Links

The problems companies face when trying to attract great tech talent

If you’re a tech business or hiring manager you’ll know how hard it is to attract great tech talent for developer and engineering roles. Developers who fit your tech stack and who have the skills and commercial understanding to grow the company and develop the product for the future are Unicorns, very rare and tricky to pin down if you’re lucky enough to find one.

In a report from Digital Ocean, hiring managers ranked the following as the most challenging aspects of hiring for these roles:

Lack of formal software engineering education (39%)
Limited pool of candidates with relevant job/technical skills (18%)
Lack of soft skills/workplace competencies (15%)
Losing top candidates to competing offers (15%)
Salary demands too high (13%)

For a tech business, not being able to hire developers and engineers has a huge impact on revenue. Not having the right talent in place means missed deadlines, projects being left incomplete and a total inability to scale up.

For hiring managers, developer roles bring an onslaught of frustrations from achieving stretching D&I targets as the talent pool is largely male to huge amounts of wasted time on candidates who are unable to fill even baseline requirements.

Traditional hiring methods aren’t providing the quality or volume of developer candidates required to make a great hire. Niche job boards, sector focused recruitment agencies and social media go some way to filling the talent pipeline, but there’s a huge database of talent that is currently untapped.

Your employee’s personal networks.

untapped networks at your fingertips

On average, individuals on LinkedIn have 930 connections. Facebook 338. Twitter 707. Let’s take the example of a 20 person organisation. Potentially you’ve got an untapped audience of 39,500 people. And that doesn’t take into account the fact that your current tech team are probably active on sites like GitHub, which has a user base of over 40 million tech professionals.

accessing employees networks

It’s no secret that referrals make great hires. Cost per hire is significantly reduced and retention rates for organisations operating an effective referral scheme average a 46% retention rate in comparison to industry averages of 33%.

Historically employee referral schemes have a high failure rate for one or more of the following reasons:

A lack of ownership internally
Leadership buy in
Manual rather than automated through tech
Lack of employee buy-in
Weak employee advocacy
The wrong incentives

The primary foundation for a great referral scheme is building employee advocacy.

Employee advocacy goes deeper than employees promoting an organisation’s brand. It’s a culture of believing in the content a firm produces and actively seeking opportunities to share that content and the job roles available.

According to Hinge Research, 80% of businesses do not have a formal employee advocacy program in place. That’s a huge competitive advantage to those that do.

so what should you consider when using referral to attract great tech talent?

If you’re going to introduce an employee referral scheme where the goal is building a tech talent pipeline, it’s critical you consider the personality traits and motivators of that specific audience.

Your ideal employee referer for development or engineer roles is likely to be your own tech team so you need to carefully consider the following:

They know tech, it’s their passion, so using the best quality employee referral technology is critical to generate engagement.
If you decide to roll out a piece of referral technology, be mindful that the language you use to roll it out to the wider business may be very different to the language you need to use for the tech team. Stick to the facts and the merits of the tech. They’ll be interested in benefits, features and the back end development.
Review your content strategy. Building employee advocacy requires employees to be engaged with your brand, believe in its value and be inspired to share the content you’re posting. It’s not just about being rewarded for sharing job ads. Consider the subject matter and the language. Keep content for a tech audience short, factual and to the point. Don’t over explain.
Gamification is a great way to create and maintain engagement with your referral scheme. Putting tech teams in competition against each other to share the most, or increase referrals is likely to appeal to their nature.
When offering rewards for sharing content or referring someone for a role, make sure you get feedback from the tech team on what motivates them. There’s a tendency to assume monetary rewards work best, but it’s often not the case. You also can’t assume that what motivates someone in the finance team for example will be the same for someone in tech.

Developers and engineers will continue to be a challenging area to recruit for. There is a war for talent, but if you can become part of the 20% using employee advocacy and referrals effectively, this will position you head and shoulders above the competition, filling your talent pipeline, reducing time and cost to hire and supporting you to scale.

Learn more about how you can source tech talent today.

The employee referral process

29th April 202120th February 2020 by Real Links

We recently released our findings based on a survey with 100 employees, which investigates the current landscape and shortcomings of employee referrals: “Rewarding Referrals: Strategies & Insights to Increase Employee Participation & Longevity”. One of our key findings was the necessity to include reward systems into your referral strategy in order to successfully increase referred hires from an industry average of under 10% to over 30%.

the referral process

Previously, we wrote about the types of rewards that can be used when providing bonuses for employee referrals. We found that while money is effective, there are many other forms that increase participation, such as time-off, personal development and experiential rewards. However, choosing the right type of reward isn’t the only factor that needs to be considered. When and how to reward referrals is equally important. Therefore, a clear, well-defined employee referral process that includes game mechanics, is what takes referrals from a passive benefit for recruitment teams to an active source of hard-to-reach candidates. In this blog, we will explore some of the dos and don’ts of the referral process.

when to reward referrals

Through our survey, we found that 34% of companies only offer rewards for referrals upon a hire being made with a further 65% once a referred candidate has passed their probation period. Only 1% of those surveyed said that their company rewards earlier in the application process. To put this into context, when considering hiring timelines (as seen below), it could take up to one year before employees are recognised for making a referral. In addition, since a majority of candidates will not pass the interview stage, most employees who have referred someone from their network will see no recognition for their efforts.

a lack of transparency

Worse yet, due to the inability to easily track the status of their referred candidates in the hiring process, employees are left in the dark on the progress of their referrals. This is even more damaging, when considering that a number of employees will refer someone and never receive a reward, creating mistrust in not only referrals but also the company they work for. In fact, our survey shows that 83% of employees are unable to track the progress of referred candidates. This means that for most employees, their experience with referrals will be a negative one.

gamification & reward systems

Looking at game mechanics as an indication for how likely employees are to participate, it’s clear that instantaneous rewarding is a key factor to success. If the employee performs a positive action, in this case an introduction to a candidate, or the very first step of a referral, they need to be immediately rewarded. Here, microrewards are powerful, and when correctly used, result in employees continuously referring. It’s important to break down the application process and to incorporate gamification into the various stages of referrals.

For example, successful forms of rewards for when a referral is made could be raffle tickets, which result in a prize at the end of the month. The more referrals an employee makes, the more raffle tickets they earn, increasing their chances of winning. When a referred candidate moves onto the interviewing stage, another micro-prize could be offered. Even something as simple as a free lunch can be highly motivational. This lets you use gamification to experience much higher returns on your referrals.

a tailored referral process

But do your employees prefer raffle tickets or a points-based system? Are they fans of leaderboards or do they dislike competition? Much like what type of reward to choose, the only way to know how to formulate your process is to ask your employees. At Real Links, the first step to creating our clients’ referral strategies is to hold focus groups with their employees. We rely on their feedback to create a referral process that increases participation and longevity. We then setup the gamification elements of our platform based on these results, ensuring that referrals are a key recruitment component in our clients’ organisations.

Interested in learning more about how you can transform referrals into a key source of hires? Download our whitepaper now.

The Benefits of Employee Referrals

29th April 202111th September 2019 by Real Links

Employee referrals are a recruitment channel with a number of benefits such as boasting an extremely high conversion rate, where only 7% of applications come in through referrals yet they’re responsible for 40% of all hires. For employees, referral programs often feature appealing bonuses such as time off, cash, physical prizes and much more. Similarly, the secret to success when it comes to candidates finding their ideal, next position often lies within their professional networks. Employee referral programs, when handled correctly, create a best-case scenario for all stakeholders: employers, employees and applicants.

Benefits for Employers

A referral program is a great way to source pre-qualified applicants, passive talent and even poach candidates from your competitors. It’s simple really, the people who you trust to produce results in your company have a vast network of likeminded individuals, who are more likely to be a cultural fit and get the job done. They also on average carry a 39% higher employee retention rate than candidates sourced through agencies and other recruitment tactics.

A solid employee referral program is also more cost and time efficient than other forms of recruitment. From a financial perspective, recruitment agencies are known to be extremely expensive. Thanks to aggressive commission schemes, they often care less about matching the ideal candidate with the role than they do about fulfilling their quotas and generating revenue. On the other hand, internal recruiters spend a significant amount of time searching for candidates, qualifying them and setting up conversations. For hard to fill roles, these considerations can be extremely difficult challenges to overcome.

Finally, assuming your employees are appropriately incentivised to refer candidates, the success of your employee referral program can speak volumes for the rate of satisfaction your employees experience in the workplace. After all, an employee that cherishes their position and company is much more likely to recommend their friends and the people they trust, if they’re happy with where they work. They’re also more motivated to recommend people they believe will truly make a change at your organisation and satisfy your growth targets as they truly care about what’s best for your company.

Benefits for Employees

While most employers have financial incentives in place when it comes to referrals, they also opt for other bonuses ranging from free travel to prizes such as bikes, gadgets and much more. On top of this, recognition in company communication channels as well as from supervisors are great motivators that push employees to become active in an employee referral program. However, there’s also the recognition within their personal networks, such as their social media channels, and the satisfaction of knowing that they helped someone close to them progress in their career.

Successful and happy employees have your company’s goals in mind and are looking for solutions to hit their personal and professional goals. For example, a software engineer may have a daunting roadmap in front of them, which an additional, productive team member would help them achieve. Finally, the prospect of having an active hand at choosing their colleagues, and working alongside people they like and respect, is very motivational.

Benefits for Candidates

Being referred for a position by someone who already works at a company often grants job seekers the coveted status of a fast track candidate by getting their CV in front of the right people at the right time. Rather than submitting their CV to hundreds of companies and filling out tedious, often painstakingly long application forms, their own networks can be a great first step to finding their next position. Or, better yet, perhaps one of your employees will reach out to them, whether they’re actively looking for the next step in their career or not, with a recommendation for the position of their dreams.

Employee referral programs are one of the strongest forms of sourcing talent that focuses on quality. They feature multiple benefits for all stakeholders and have an active hand in creating a tangible, positive company culture. If you’re interested in learning more about employee referrals, Real Links’ platform automates the entire employee referral program through an intuitive matching system that promises to reduce the time spent and costs of recruitment.

Get in touch with us now.

Why should I improve my employee referral scheme now..?

21st April 202115th August 2018 by Real Links

Successful employee referral schemes are a powerful recruiting tool for businesses – they provide significant cost savings and help companies to make more productive hires who stay long term. The problem is that increasing referrals still tends to fall quite low down on the priority list for companies.

Don’t just take our word for it though, let’s have a look at some of the key stats…

9 Key Statistics

1. Highest ROI

82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment (ROI)

2. Better quality hires

88% of employers said that referrals are the #1 best source for above-average applicants

3. More likely to be hired

Employee referrals are 3-4x more likely to be hired than non-referral candidates

4. Better retention rates

Employee referral candidates have an average retention rate of 46%, compared to the 33% retention rates of organisations that only use career sites

5. More affordable

Hiring through employee referrals saves companies at least £2,270 per hire

6. More likely to accept the job

Referred candidates are more likely to accept the job

7. Reduce time to hire

Employee referral candidates are 55% faster to hire, compared with employees hired through other channels

8. Good for diversity hires

Employee referrals are the #1 most productive source of diversity hires

9. Attract passive candidates

Employee referral schemes are more likely to attract passive candidates than other recruitment channels

These are just some of the key stats which show how running a successful referral scheme can be transformative for companies.

If you’re interested in implementing a referral scheme or improving your existing one, Real Links’ employee referral platform can help!

If you’re looking to learn more, feel free to get in touch by emailing sales@reallinks.io. We’re always happy to chat!

How to nail your employee referral program with tech…

23rd April 202115th August 2018 by Real Links

How Real Links, the employee referral platform, uses technology to solve the problems with employee referral schemes…

My role as co-founder of Real Links is to undertake the software development and product design of our platform. My colleague Sam Davies has already written about the problems that companies typically encounter with employee referral programs after surveying HR professionals and employees.Today, I want to explain how we’ve harnessed technology to solve these problems and build a simple process to increase employee referrals and decrease recruitment spend.

My referral scheme is getting results, couldn’t my company solve the problems with our referral schemes without third party software..?

Undoubtedly, there are some solutions that companies could implement. However, these processes are very labour intensive so it’s our belief that any company looking to improve their existing processes or create new ones could gain a lot from an automated and efficient system.

Visibility?—?I’m not told about vacancies at my company:

The companies with the most successful referral schemes think carefully about who in their company might have good connections for a specific role, for example those of a similar age or with connections at previous companies, and then make them aware of such roles.

We’ve made this super simple with a one click email to employees asking them to share the job vacancy via email or in their social networks.

We’ve also built an employee referral portal that houses all your current job postings from your ATS which an employee can access to view the current postings.

Time?—?It takes too long to refer someone.

Time and again the feedback we got from candidates was that they are too busy to share jobs with their friends or, if they do, it’ll just be someone in their immediate social sphere.

We’ve made it possible for employees to refer their network through our easy to use one click sharing features while also tracking the results.

Recognition:

The best referral schemes had employees rewarded for simply taking part. We spoke to one company where their employees would get a £20 gift voucher simply for sharing a job on LinkedIn. Now, that might be on the generous side but giving employees an incentive to be engaged in the process makes a lot of sense?—?maybe the first few times they try to refer a role they don’t know anyone suitable, but what if they do on the third attempt.

With a typical referral incentive scheme where a hire is rewarded, employees often lose interest.

At Real Links, we have a leaderboard that encourages employees to keep coming back to collect points (gamification) and also the opportunity to win prizes as they score to certain levels.

Conclusion:

Individually, these are all pretty straightforward steps you can start to implement today to improve your scheme, in fact you are probably already doing some of these things. However, it takes time to monitor, optimise and implement these features manually and suggest using a software tool would be preferential.