Championing Employee Referrals During Reductions in Force

The Important Role Employees Can Play In Acquiring Talent

Whenever you want someone else to help you accomplish something, it makes sense to make the business case for them to do so.  Helping employees understand why their participation in the referral program is critical to the organizations recovery is key.  Select from the following list the specific reasons that are most likely to resonate with your employees.

• Employee referrals produce quality hires – it is always important to educate your employees to the fact that employee referrals consistently produce the highest quality hires, and that with only a few critical openings, it is even more important now to use the best sources to produce high quality hires.
• It is part of your culture – it is important to remind your employees that it is part of your corporate culture to contribute wherever you can. Because corporate recruiting resources have been cut back, now more than ever employees have to chip in. Doing more with less might mean that for the short-term, referrals will be rewarded with reduced bonuses or alternate rewards.
• Employees have numerous contacts – make employees aware of the fact that their personal contact network is extremely broad, and if harnessed, can find candidates that might be missed by normal corporate recruiting processes.
• Employees are active on social networks – make sure that your employees are aware that the growing use of social networks and social media provides a new opportunity to recruit. Because recruiter time is severely limited and authentic social network activity is needed, employees can play a major role by expanding the scope of the organization’s social network presence. Even if the corporation limits access on the job, personal networking can still play a role.
• Employees are more approachable – make employees aware that “colleague to colleague” initial contacts are more likely to be successful than typical recruiter e-mails and cold calls, especially among non-active prospects. In addition, individuals not actively looking for a job are more likely to reach out to an employee for more information than a recruiter.
• Employees are more believable – remind your employees that messages from them are seen as highly credible by potential recruits, and that because they live the job, they may be better able to provide more current and detailed information about the work and the work environment.
• Employees add a layer of assessment – educate your employees so they understand that their ability to assess whether a prospect has the right skill set and also fits the corporate culture add significant value to the overall recruiting process.
• A chance to work alongside with the very best – remind your employees that they have a unique opportunity to spur company growth by attracting the very best for future openings. Not only will this provide help to the company and their future job security, but it will also help to assure that they as individual employees will get to work alongside the very best talent that is available.