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.
You could be of help to anyone seeking employment or requesting to be referred to a much sought-after job role. Anticipation opens the door to proactive referrals.
Usually, recruiters post job openings in the referral portal, job sites, or advertise through referral newsletters only after a job requirement is approved and opened for hire.
This means you start sourcing, soliciting referrals only after the job role is clear. This means that you are generating leads for hires through reactive referrals.
The downside of following this process as a recruiter is that you should wait for employees to see your message and then share profiles of good candidates.
Only if people could focus on referrals based on the quality of candidates and the joining ratio, you will be favoring proactive referrals.
Referrals often find good proactive sources of quality candidates that are excited to join and stay. If an employee knows a friend who fulfills the good, excited, ready to join, and serves long tenure criteria, what more do you need as a recruiter? Just interview and select the candidate. Ain’t that simple?
But the alarming fact is that the recruitment teams should follow the procedures set by the organization for pre-and post-hiring. So, how do you convert reactive referrals to proactive ones?
Conduct one-on-ones
Be alert and smart, realize there is always a demand for niche skills. When you conduct regular one-on-one discussions with your employees, you will end up knowing more about their network. So, when there is a dire need for a candidate, who can immediately check with your employees’ mates, get introduced to your potential candidates, and convince them that the job is simply meant for them. Hire them and see your prospective referral idea take off.
Good people know good people
It is well-known that Good People know Good Peopleand be assured that your top-performing employees bring like-minded high-quality profiles to add more value to your organization. Not only that, but the top performers also stay abreast about the industry expertise and continuously learn from their friends working in other top companies who someday may be your newfound employee. The top performers will also not waste their time in referring people with average performance. It is advisable that the open jobs with the highest impact can take the proactive referral route.
Target the right employees
If a proactive referral is in your mind, then you should target the right set of employees, such as innovators, top performers, leaders, and employees connected well in the industry. Normally, these employees will know the quality of work of their friends and people in their network. The employee subgroup will have a pool of candidates you are looking for and can rely on for referrals.
Be responsive
Streaming a good volume of quality referrals doesn’t happen overnight. Instead of spamming the inboxes of performing employees, create a good rapport, ask for exceptional referrals and provide immediate feedback on the quality of candidates and the referral process. Acknowledge and pay the referral bonus as promised once you have a qualified referral candidate onboard. Being responsive and open to face-to-face discussions can be rewarding for proactive referrals.
What are the other pointers you need to know to achieve proactive referrals?
As a recruiter, you should:
- Analyze job trends and identify patterns of hiring. For example, how many candidates you’d hire with a specific skill set in a month?
- Compare with the previous year’s hiring patterns and derive as to what is required in the current hiring.
- Be ready with open jobs created for each skill pool. It will be easy for the employees to tag their friends against the skill pools and bring them on to your organization.
- Close open positions based on the actual demand.
- Ensure that you don’t lose out on candidates who are selected or interviewed for the jobs that are closed or offered to other candidates.
Still confused on how to convert reactive referrals to proactive referrals, contact Ripplehire, and cut down your sourcing efforts.