Why your employee referral program is flatlining - and how to fix it

Employee referral programs are meant to make your life easier. So why is it so hard to get referrals when you actually need them? Here are the top 3 reasons why your employee referral program is flatlining and what you can do to fix it.

1. It’s too hard

Most people have at least 500 connections in their network. Trawling through these whenever a hiring manager pings out a new job is simply too labour intensive, even for the most motivated team members.

2. It’s too awkward

Passive candidates are some of the best, but expecting an employee to reach out to candidates who aren’t even looking for opportunities, might be too much to ask.

This means employees will most likely focus on the active candidates they know, a much smaller pool of talent (if any).

3. More money, more problems?

Let’s face it, we all like money. So when your hiring manager dangles 5 or 10k in front of the team, you’re likely to get a bunch of referrals, but how good are they?

Are they referring the candidate because they have the right skills and values, did they even read the job spec before they started smashing the “Refer” button, or are they purely getting involved for the cash?

Alright alright we get it, how do we fix all this?!

Your employees shouldn’t be spending their valuable time studying job specs or trawling through connections, they should be focusing on the value adding part, making warm introductions to awesome talent.

Implementing an employee referral platform like Wintro allows you to sync your employees’ connections with your ATS, clever matching then does the job of finding matches for open roles based on skills and experience.

The best part? Employees only have to get involved once you’ve found a great candidate they already know, making it super easy for them to reach out when you need it the most.

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