Prior and proper planning is worth a laud. If you could only plan and introduce a good talent from your network even before the need arises, you have given your share to proactive referrals.

Employee referral programs always work. After all, "Good people know good people." What could be the best, direct way to bring skilled or performing employees to your organization? When you introspect or dive deeper, the answer is within your organization, the top-performing employees will know people like them and can add more value to your company by just referring their friends. Ain't that simple?

For a well-functioning referral program, you need three pillars — employee, candidate, and recruiter. 

Time to fill is the most important metric for a recruiter or a talent acquisition professional. Business opens up a requisition. And, more often than not, they wanted the person to join as of yesterday. It invariably means that finding a good candidate and getting them to join becomes critical. And, doing so superfast is important.

Is culture a big excuse you’re using to explain the failure of your employee referral program? Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fair assumption to say that organization with a bad culture will not recommend their friends to join them.

Stress is a serious problem, especially in the recruitment industry. Being an HR, you have to deal with stress more because you have many stakeholders — multiple bosses. The need to constantly juggle for meeting the demands of the organization and your respective bosses’ expectations is alarming. Simultaneously, as an HR personnel, you must deal with your own deadlines and hires.

Now that employees are aware of the referral program in your organization. What’s the next best thing you can do to facilitate referrals? How do you engage employees to refer?

Let’s say, you’ve been contemplating an employee referral program and the first thought in your mind is…launching it will be the most difficult thing! However, you realize keeping the referrals coming in is the greatest challenge ever in any employee referral program.

Employee referral is one of the best ways to hire quality talent. Given the potency of hire that you receive, it is important that you understand this channel thoroughly and implement best practices to make the most out of it. One of the critical elements in the best practices in dealing with rejections. Put differently, how do you reject candidates that have come through referrals.

‘What is in a name? ’ While names cannot be reduced to a mere identity, they do convey a lot of things - dreams, aspirations, and goals. Ask the authors or the entrepreneurs who spend countless hours naming their books or startup. 

Employee referrals are one of the best sources of hiring. It helps you attract talent that is excited to join and stay. As a recruiter, you would have tried all means to improve quality, achieve quantity and create a meaningful experience for your candidates.

Organizations are adjusting to working from home to protect their employees from the outbreak. Recruiters are looking for gigs and employees who can work remotely. The HR team is also juggling a variety of engagement activities to keep their employees happy, valued and informed.

Employee referrals are good for any organization, be it big or small. A LinkedIn report affirms, when companies follow the traditional recruitment style, hiring takes an average of 55 days. In contrast, it takes only 29 days to hire a candidate through referral.

Why is diversity hiring critical? Well, when there are different types of people voicing out different opinions, the discussions and the decisions made by the diverse group will definitely meet all ends. As Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google opines “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.”

Did a candidate promise to come and not show up for a walk in?

While you are breaking away your roti to dip in a puddle of dal, a line manager walks up to you in a huff and a puff. They urgently need five resources, for revenue is at stake and that critical customer will go away. Urgent scenarios like these push their way to the front. Because they are loud, emotional and their consequences seem immediate. 

There was an amazing session with Devdutt Patnaik an acclaimed author, mythologist and leadership coach at #TechHR2019, unraveling tech through the lessons of mythology. Here are the excerpts from the session.

Gone are the days of job boards, applications and resume portal. Welcome to the new world of social recruiting where referrals, analytics and integrated recruiting rule the roost.

Employee challenges or escalations tend to be around two major things - payroll and employee referral statuses. An employee holds the referral process fairly close to their heart. They have taken the efforts to find good talent and believe that the candidate would be a good fit for the organisation. Employees tend to get emotionally vested with their friends whom they have referred for a particular role and as a result expect to be kept in the loop around their candidature.

Poof! Gone! He/She is not picking up my calls any more. Aunt, Uncle, Mother are in the hospital. Or god forbid, in the mortuary.