Driving a higher quality of hire using employee referral

Hiring a top-notch person delivers exceptional value to the business. A high performing sales professional can do double the revenue as compared to the average salesperson. In the world of engineering, there is a term called as a 10X developer. This is a developer who is exponentially better than every resource around him. Hence, the term 10X.

 

Finding such a high quality talent is becoming critical for talent acquisition teams. The biggest question today is how can you impact the quality of hire using the right sources of hiring. Amongst different sources of hire available, the number one source for a quality hire is known to be employee referrals. Employee referral is where an employee in the organization recommends a friend and suggest that you hire them. Employee referral is also a channel where your employees connect a high potential candidate and convince them to join you.

 

Why is employee referral historically connected with a good quality of a hire? Well, typically high performing employees love working with high caliber talent. We spend almost 30 percent of our lifetimes at work and there is nothing more exhilarating than working with a high potential person.

 

If you think about it, your employees remember high performing people far more and build relationships with them simply because

 

a.  They are capable

b.  They have been helpful

c.  They would love to experience working with them again

 

In the world of social media and micro social media everybody is connected. When you put a job post out, an employee immediately recollects that friend who helped them or that colleague who was exceptional in their previous roles and recommends them to your organization.

 

Employee referrals are known to deliver talent which is 32 percent better in terms of productivity than any other source. The retention through this channel is almost 23 percent, better than the other sources.

 

How then can we leverage the referral channel to improve the quality of hire

In a survey conducted by Dr. John Sullivan (world's leading proponent of employer referral programs) among 73 major employers, 88 percent agreed that employee referrals were the #1 source for above average applicants. But, how do we improve this number beyond?

 

One of the easiest options is to start targeting. Target the high caliber talent available in the organization already. Let me share a classic example of our customer Myntra Jabong.

 

They ran a beautiful campaign to penetrate to the IIT, and IIM campuses and alumni networks using their brand. Their objective was very clear - ‘build a brand with the right folks.’

Mithun Kulkarni, SPOC – Talent Acquisition, went ahead and identified high quality talent across different departments. He targeted employees belonging to the alumni networks of IIT and IIM. These folks joined the campaign and showed much eagerness. They started pushing the Myntra brand out in their networks. It worked wonders, because what Myntra did was not just about building a brand. But, they built a brand amongst high potential talent. Talent that is largely passive. Remember, in a hiring market, your brand outcomes are driven by where you build it. That’s the power of employee referral.

 

So let’s say you are looking to do diversity hiring. You can identify a bunch of women employees in the organisation and ask them to push content in their channels. Or, if you are hiring for high potential talent - Simply identify top performers across product, engineering, sales, marketing and various other functions. Encourage them to go out and share the jobs of your organisation amongst their peer groups.

 

Over 7 years of existence, we can vouch that employee referral is the shortcut to delivering or identifying high caliber talent in the organisation. Do let us know how you are leveraging your employee referrals channel to hire high caliber talent. We would love to hear!