Shortcut to hiring talent super-fast using employee referrals

In my observation, I have seen hiring managers to be very consistent species. Across industries, countries and levels, they all tend to have the same ask when they put out the job role. Can we hire this person as of yesterday?

Closing positions fast drives universal stakeholder delight. In this article, I am going to share two shortcuts through which you can hire super fast.

Traditionally, employee referrals has always been looked at as a slow channel. You need to create job ads, float an internal communication (this would involve talking to corporate communication and that alone would add a delay), then get employees engaged and get profiles. It becomes hard to rely on the employee referral channel when you look to hire the candidate as of yesterday.

What do we need to do to close quality positions quickly?

1) A high quality candidate accelerates your hiring process. A high quality candidate runs through interviews very fast, is selected very quickly and generally get everybody in the interview panels excited enough that you want to close on them quickly.

Let’s say you are looking to hire an architect. Check for the best architect around you in the company. Run a quick search in your company directory or outlook or any other repository. Find 5-6 top notch people. Ping them on instant messenger or drop a quick email describing your requirement with a link, so that they could simply forward it in their networks.

Boom! You start getting referrals through this channel who have already passed the bar in terms of quality. Review the profiles, get it to the hiring manager. Make sure to let them know these candidates came through some of the best architects in the company. This ultimately builds a belief in the candidature of the profiles thus accelerating the hiring process.

As a recruiter, this cuts down your sourcing efforts. All you would need to do up front is to check alignment in terms of aspirations, notice period, etc. Going the referral route also allows you to invest more time in the candidate experience.

2) The second shortcut is largely basis forecasting. As a talent acquisition professional or HR leader, anticipate, analyse and forecast the kind of profile you are hunting for every month and set up a calendar. Check whether you can create a community of jobs and push it out it onto the network for employees to refer.

For ex. if you are hiring 50 people in the voice process every month or a new project needs specific technical skill sets.

All you need to do is create dummy openings for those skills and float them in your referral pool. Voila, you would get a steady stream of folks who are already eligible and interested. You can identify the best candidates and keep them warm, maybe run a quick screening call even as you have a good head start of fifteen to thirty days. The moment the position hits, you can present this high calibre pool to the hiring manager and their team for quick processing and closure. In fact, this head start also gives you good advantage with some geographies where notice periods tend to be higher, resulting in faster time to fill.

What do you do to accelerate your hiring process today? Would really love to know how you leveraged your referral channel or any other tricks you have tried to drive faster time to fill.