Leveraging Employee Referrals to build a strong and powerful employer brand

Organisations that are constantly hiring best talent are getting their employer branding right. Because they have realised that employer branding is more than just a pretty careers page.

 

What is employer branding?

 

Employer branding is the exercise carried out by companies to tell its story or describe their workplace / employee value proposition to pool of talents available in the market.

 

Every organization should build a strong employer brand. It becomes the foundation of attracting top notch talent.

 

Why does employee referrals matter in employer branding?

 

Today, many organizations are investing in employer branding to differentiate themselves, to attract the best talent and affect the metrics that matters the most -- quality of hire. When done correctly, an employer branding activity can smoothen your entire recruiting process and has the possibility to improve your offer to joining ratio.

 

According to a glassdoor research, 61% of glassdoor users report that they seek company reviews and ratings even before making a decision to apply. They research the jobs, salaries, reviews, culture and even employees of a company, across multiple channels and touchpoints to decide if it’s the right job for their next role. Interestingly, out of all the ways candidates search for new employers and jobs, 76% ranked employee referrals as being high to extremely high importance.

 

Every good candidate out there is one way or the other subjected to some form of conversation around multiple employers, their brand stories. An employee referral can essentially help you cut through the noise. Employee referrals helps you communicate, bring a call to action to all the branding content and shortcut the employer branding process.

 

Employer branding through referrals

 

Typical employer brand involves having a good career site where few employees share perspectives of how it is to work there. But these stories largely loosen their charm because most candidates may not even visit your career site as part of the candidature or interviewing process.

 

Employee referrals on the other hand comes from a trusted source. When an employee makes a referral, he/she invariably tells the candidate ‘Hey! my company is a great place to work and i love it if you join me here’. You are relying on the trust and connection built by your employee. You are relying on the fact that the employee who is referring would only refer if they like working in the organisation. As a result, candidates trust your organization and are willing to give it a shot.

 

Having said this, what is important to for employer branding activity is to have an easy call to action for the referral channel. Providing an easy way for your employee to effectively penetrate their networks and push your jobs out is key. The moment he/she refers a candidate, they are immediately tagged as referral. This automatically incentivises employees to want to share more. For a complete transparency, you also have to keep the employee informed of the success of the candidature of their friends.

 

There are nuances to employer branding. Employee referrals can help with few nuances like

       - Brand among passive talent

       - Can help you reach candidates where they exist

 

For example, let’s assume you want to penetrate college campuses. For off campus hiring, you could target all the students that you have hired in the previous year from those colleges and have them push your jobs right before placement season into campuses. While many students may apply and you may choose to consider or not consider, what you would have achieved through this activity is a brand proposition from a senior that they trust in their networks.

 

Similarly, you could use employer branding to penetrate alumni networks. Employees are connected through whatsapp groups with their friends from the educational institutes they studied from or the companies they worked for in the past. Using employee referrals, you can reach out to passive talents, which may not be available through traditional channels like LinkedIn, Naukri or other job portals.

 

So, if you are building an employer brand, do consider employee referrals channel. Remember, an employee who recommends your organisation to a candidate is very likely going to attract high calibre talent and drive a quick closure. Tracking candidate jobs views through employee shares also gives you the ability to track the impact of your branding efforts.

 

Would love to hear more on your employer branding efforts. If you have looked to connect employer brand with referrals process, let me know your views in the comments below.