Employee referral programs prove themselves time after time to be a well valued investment. All investments require some type of capital to get off the ground and your employee referral program is no different. Incentives, time, and several other factors play into the successful launch and ultimately success of your employee referral program.

Human resources and recruiting professionals have been pushed to the brink to develop strategies which simultaneously improve employer brand, streamline recruiting and onboarding, all while on a shoestring budget. Amidst this daunting challenge one glowing solution has arisen, employee referrals. After all, what do you do when you have limited HR staff and resources? Make everyone in the organization a recruiter! Not to mention the potential offset of recruiting costs that happens when you make quick effective hires. With this in mind, we began to wonder who in the marketplace is doing this better than others.

Employee referral hiring is a recruitment method plagued with misinformation. While the data regarding its ability to secure quality hires is irrefutable, there is still some bad press out there due to various poor experiences. So with this in mind we are going to clear the air on 5 myths currently circulating, and maybe preventing your employee referral program from truly taking off.

Even a perfectly designed employee referral program can be rendered useless if no one knows how it works, or that it even exists. Properly promoting your program is equally as important as having one in the first place, but maybe you don’t have access to a marketing department to help spread the word. Don’t fret! Here are some ways to unleash your inner marketer and take back your employee referral program once and for all:

At Preferhired, we try to make the referral process as simple as possible so you can focus on the who rather than the how. Using text and email is a great way to share a job posting when you have a particular referral (or referrals) in mind for a role you’ve found. It’s quick, it’s personal, and your referral has a good chance of seeing your message sooner when sent directly to their personal phone or email account.

At Preferhired, we try to make the referral process as simple as possible so you can focus on the who rather than the how. Taking advantage of free job posting sites is a great way to share an opening with a wide range of potential candidates, especially if you don’t happen to have anyone in your own network in mind for that role.

At Preferhired, we try to make the referral process as simple as possible so you can focus on the who rather than the how. Using LinkedIn and Facebook are great ways to share a job posting with people in your network. This method is fast, easy, and you’re able to reach a wider controlled audience compared to other methods.

At Preferhired, we try to make the referral process as simple as possible so you can focus on the who rather than the how. Utilizing Facebook Marketplace is an easy, free way to find potential candidates. It also allows you to narrow down the location, so you know that the people who see your post are in a specific area.

Established employee referral programs are essential for maintaining a constant pool of candidates that are of high quality in nature. The largest struggle when developing a program is communication and engagement. The ability to communicate the benefits to employees, to participate in such a program, is a major obstacle that needs to be overcome before the program can be successful. One of those methods of concise communication is the value proposition or tagline you’re using to create a strong buzz.

The employee referral program is one of the hardest programs in HR to not only start but to keep employees engaged. We sourced our own networks and the networks of others in order to find the best advice from a practitioner who has either started or maintained a program all the way up from the 10,000 person company to a 100 and below company. The advice these practitioners are giving transcends industry and in most cases --- company size. 

So sit back and join us for what we're calling the PhD Expert Series on employee referrals.