Manage and Track Referrals

As we’ve covered before, employee referrals are one of the top ways to recruit new, high-performing talent into your company. Not only do they generally have a higher ROI than working with recruiters or job boards, but they tend to yield higher quality candidates.

As you grow, however, it can be easy to lose track of your referrals. Poor management of your employee referral program (ERP) can mean losing out on stellar candidates or frustrating your existing employees.

Here’s how you can set yourself up for success from Day One.

Have an employee referral policy in place

Your policy should outline the basic details you should nail down before launching your ERP, including:

The type of reward employees should expect when they refer a successful candidate
When employees will be paid for referrals (upon hiring? Three months into the new candidate’s tenure?)
Which employees can participate in the program (for ex., will recruiters and leadership be excluded?)
Guidelines around who can be referred as candidates

If you’d like some guidance, Workable offers a free employee referral policy template that you can work off of.

Set up a way to track referrals

Software will streamline the process of tracking and managing referrals. The Swarm in particular helps with the generation and processing of new referrals from your team members and key company stakeholders.

However, if you want to manage things yourself, that’s no problem; you can create a tracker within a spreadsheet or a project management system.

Your tracker should allow you to see:

Employee’s notes about referral candidate
Contact information for the referral candidate and referrer
HR/hiring managers’ notes about referral candidate’s interview
Hiring status for referral candidate (Interviewing, Rejected, Accepted)

A one-stop shop for referral data will streamline your ERP and allow you to compare candidates side by side. It also enables HR to track employees’ referral numbers to determine who the top recruiters are.

Make it easy for employees to submit referrals

When only one or two referrals are coming in, it’s easy to track down the information you need. But set yourself up for success long-term by creating a uniform way for employees to submit references with all the details you need. Consider setting up a form (such as a Google Form) where employees can send through their referrals. Make sure your fields include space for:

The employee’s name
The referral’s name and contact information
The role they’d like to fill
The connection between the employee and referral
Why the employee thinks this referral is a good fit for both the role and the company
Whether the employee has gotten in touch with the referral about the position

Add referrals into recruiters’ workflow

Whether you have an internal recruiter or you’re handling everything yourself at the moment, make sure that you have guidelines around when you’ll reach out to referrals, how quickly you’ll process them, and the maximum time you’ll wait before following up.

Your employees have personal connections to referrals, and it reflects badly on them if you take too long to respond to emails or never follow up. Mark off time in your calendar or workflow to make sure you’re answering referrals promptly and getting interviews scheduled in your calendar.

Keep referrals top of mind

A strong ERP requires participation from everyone. Dedicate a section in your employee newsletter to highlight current openings. Announce any newly added incentives at your next all-hands meeting.

Employees who have referrals in the system will also be curious about how their candidates are progressing. Set up a way for them to check in on their referral’s status. Better yet, send them a notification when their referral moves on to the next stage (or gets cut).

Follow up with a note of appreciation and encourage them to submit another referral.

Seek feedback from employees

Since employees are submitting to the ERP most often, their input will help you refine your process. The more streamlined your program is, the more employees will participate. Keep improving your referral process to make the ERP as straightforward and accessible as possible.

Streamline your employee referrals

Employee referrals are one of the most effective ways to build out your talent pipeline. If certain parts of your ERP aren’t working, continue to adjust them to make sure employees and their referrals are delighted with the program.

If you ever decide you want to step up your ERP tracking and management, The Swarm platform will help you source, manage, and track your referrals — supporting you from your very first referral hire and scaling from there.

Harness the power of networks to make your recruiting more efficient. Start free at theswarm.com