Simple steps to transform your referral program

Simple steps to

transform your referral program

zalp.com

Employee Referrals most certainly make the

best hires

If you work in corporate recruiting, this piece of information is hardly news. For one thing, it's a matter of common sense that the people closest to your best employees would probably make good employees too. For another thing, several commonly cited statistics illustrate the value of referrals.

As Research States: • It takes an average of just 10.4 referrals to make a hire.

• At a typical company, referrals account for anywhere from 24% to one-third of all hires.

• Some companies make as many as 75% of their placements through referrals.

• Referral hires perform 3% to 15% better than hires from other sources.

• Referral candidates accept offers 15% more often than regular candidates.

A Workforce Management and Ohio State University study found that candidates hired through an employee referral had a 25% higher retention rate than those hired through other means.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Employee Referrals most certainly make the

Recognizing benefits like these, more and more forward-thinking HR departments are trying to optimize their employee referral programs (ERPs) to yield more high-quality referrals. In fact, it's not uncommon for HR staffs to set a goal of increasing employee referrals by 50%.

best hires

What if you could substantially increase your percentage of hires made from employee-initiated referrals? What impact would this improvement have on your recruiting budget?

Today there is a growing importance of engagement and relationship building with potential candidates. With the modified communication patterns, candidates expect two-way interactions with recruiters.

And this is possible by leveraging the power of social media with the employee referral program of an organization. Using socially intelligent tools that engage employees and use them as recruitment ambassadors is the need of the hour.

The recruiting industry is full of ideas on how to optimize your ERP to improve the quality of your referrals while reducing time-to-hire and cost-per-hire. Let's take a look at some simple steps when combined with the right tools can transform you referral program.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Marketing your

ERP

An ERP can't just be something that lives on an intranet page, likely to be seen only by employees who are looking for it. Driving participation in your ERP will require consistent marketing to your entire employee base.

To keep your ERP top-of-mind with employees, consider implementing any or all of the following marketing components: • A catchy program name, punchy tagline, and custom logo. Make sure your program messaging stresses the benefits to the employee, as well as to the company and the employee's friends.

• Branded giveaway materials, such as mouse pads, water bottles, coffeemugs, laptop bags, and apparel.

• Periodic awards ceremonies at which employees who earned referral bonuses receive oversized novelty checks, much like sweepstakes winners.

• Quarterly prize drawings for employees who make successful referrals. These prizes can be awarded in addition to any predetermined bonus checks.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Marketing your

ERP

• A program newsletter that interviews employees about how they have used their bonuses, inspiring others to achieve the same success. • Targeted messages to employees who work in specific geographies, or who are most likely to have connections that can help fill your hottest job openings.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Keeping employees the

priority

A second key priority in optimizing your ERP should be to deliver a positive referral experience for your employees. Your goal? Increase employee participation by making it easy for every employee to source talent.

Your ERP should be helping you: • Increase the volume and quality of your referrals.

• Prioritize and follow up with recruiters, employees, and candidates.

• Incentivize employees to keep referring talented contacts.

You can achieve these goals by focusing on three central tasks: • Ask employees regularly for referrals. Send automated, targeted emails that encourage employees to submit the names of their most qualified contacts.

• Help employees dig into their social networks. Don't assume your employees will remember all the relevant contacts in their Facebook or LinkedIn account. Chances are, they have hundreds or even thousands of connections and won't be able to recall offhand which

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Keeping employees the

priority

of them fits well for any specific open position. Instead, using social matching technology to reach these connections automatically can be a great solution. Socially intelligent employee referral tools such as ZALP can help you do so with ease. • Help employees share jobs quickly and easily. Employees don't want to add more footwork to their schedules, even if there's a chance they'll earn a $1,000 bonus check. If you want to maximize participation in your program, you'll need to help employees refer their friends within a matter of a few clicks. ZALP gives your employees not one but five easy and convenient ways to make referrals.

And as you optimize your ERP, you should frequently reassess whether your rewards serve two purposes: driving employee participation, and ensuring a high quality of referrals.

Ask yourself: • Do my employees value monetary rewards, gifts, or charitable donations most highly? If you don't know the answer, consider running a survey.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Keeping employees the

priority

• Should we offer employees a choice of rewards? Sometimes options drive participationbut too many choices can be overwhelming and can actually diminish interest among would-be participants.

• Is our program attracting top performers? One way to drive higherquality referrals is to offer bonuses only after a new hire has remained with the company for a set period of time perhaps 90 days.

• Does our program build teamwork and pride among the workforce? Cash awards will convince most employees to sit up and take notice as ZALP can help you do so with ease.

But according to recruiting thought leader Dr. John Sullivan, you should “instill in your employees that the primary reason that they should refer people is because the team wins 'when it has the best players.' It is a superior motivator over monetary rewards, because it turns referrals into an opportunity to provide their teammates and themselves with the very best co-workers.”

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Enhancing the Candidate

Experience

In their hurry to make the ERP as easy and as appealing as possible for employees, companies often neglect to optimize the candidate experience. But they do so at their own peril.

As you work to provide the best possible candidate experience, keep in mind that you're not just striving to avoid committing breaches of etiquette and other relatively minor mistakes. Providing a positive candidate experience enables your company to build a superior employment brand. This, in turn, will help ensure a pipeline of talent for future open positions.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

Unleash the potential of your Employee Referral Program with ZALP–The Socially Intelligent Employee Referral Tool ZALP enables organizations to automate and streamline every aspect of their employee referral program while at the time same integrating it with the potent potential of social recruitment using its advanced social media capabilities.

Each of ZALP's features have been specifically developed to give organizations a new and innovative referral platform that drastically accelerates employee participation which in turn results in a considerable reduction in the cost per hire and time to fill.

The unique aspect about ZALP is that it gives employees not one but five easy and convenient ways to refer jobs to their connections.

Interesting features like the ZALP Match ensures that even if employees do not have a top of mind connection to make a referral, the built-in intelligent match feature suggests the most relevant matches for a job out of his/her own social network connections.

Advanced features like the ZALP Track ensures that employees are kept well updated on the status of their referrals by giving them real time updates on the entire referral progress.

The interesting thing about ZALP is that it is a highly scalable tool and can be seamlessly used by organizations having 100 to even 10000+ employees.

Considering ZALP operates in the SAAS model (software -as-aservice) organizations do not have to go through the cumbersome hassles of integration and implementation. Organizations with even a global presence can effortlessly adopt ZALP without having to go through any elaborate integration process.

Simple steps to transform your referral program

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