Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Referrals are the most effective sourcing channel. And among all referrals, those from top performers are the absolute best. After you recognize these two facts, you should first identify and then prioritize the jobs where a top performer really makes a significant difference. Then you must develop a process for proactively asking your top performers to make a handful of high-quality referrals each year.
Start By Learning These Guardrails From The Best Research On Employee Referrals
After decades of corporate, vendor, and academic research on the most impactful employee referrals, there is now a clear consensus that leads to four foundation guardrails that should guide everyone involved in hiring.
- Make it clear that you only accept qualified referrals – you must make it clear to your employees that they cannot submit a single “junk referral.” This includes cases where an employee refers a complete stranger who approached them, or when an employee refers a candidate primarily for the money or a favor. Avoid clogging your referral process by only accepting “qualified referrals” that meet these four criteria. The first qualifier is that the referring employee clearly knows the details surrounding their referral’s exceptional work. You must also require the referring employee to attest to having already thoroughly assessed these three things. A candidate’s high skill levels, their fit to the organization, and the fact that they have already been presold on accepting an initial interview.
- Make everyone aware that some referrals have greater business impacts – everyone must realize that not all referrals have an equal business impact. This means referrals from top performers need to be prioritized. As should referrals for critical jobs and referrals targeting employees currently working at your top competitor companies. It’s also important to note that the seminal study on referrals found that top performer referrals have a 90% greater profit impact than the average employee referral.
- Because referrals produce the highest-quality hire, you should focus on them – a simple Google search reveals that, of all sourcing channels, employee referrals consistently produce the highest quality of hire. They also lead to longer retention, a better cultural fit, and faster hiring. So that means that you should narrow down your overall sourcing effort. So that it focuses on the channel with the highest quality of hire (employee referrals).
- Because top performers submit the very best ones, prioritize their referrals – once again, the seminal study on employee referrals. Found that the very best referrals almost always come from top-performing employees. This research concluded that top performers consistently refer other top performers. Simply because every employee that makes a referral naturally refers others “just like themselves.” And that attempt to “mirror themselves” fortunately means that the candidates that top performers refer will have the same or a higher level of skills, fit, and performance.
Understanding Why Top Performer Referrals Produce The Absolute Best Candidates & Hires
If the currently available research and corporate referral data isn’t enough to convince you, below you will find a list of the top 10 foundation factors that cause top performer referrals to produce the best candidates and new hires among all sourcing channels.
- Because great people know great people, top performers can make successful referrals – because top performers know, learn from, and regularly interact with other top performers. They have the highest probability of any source for convincing top prospects to become a referral. In direct contrast, most recruiters who handle multiple jobs don’t really know, nor can they successfully build a relationship with top-performing prospects.
- Expect fewer hiring failures because referral candidates go through a second level of qualification assessment – referrals will have fewer candidate assessment errors. The referring employee automatically adds another qualification assessment level. That added level of assessment will lead to fewer hiring failures.
- With a second level of fit assessment, referral hires will be a better fit – because most fit assessments are extremely subjective. Having a second fit assessment completed by the referring employee will minimize the chances of a bad fit that could lead to early turnover or lower productivity.
- Coaching by the referring employee will improve productivity and minimize hiring failures – because the referring employee will strongly want their referred candidate to succeed. The referring employee will almost always initially coach them and continually help them overcome any obstacles. That will result in a higher level of performance while minimizing new-hire stress and any chance of a hiring failure.
- Not wanting to disappoint will cause referred hires to perform better/stay longer – because all referred employees won’t want to let the employees who referred them down. The new hire will work harder and stay longer.
- High expectations will also increase new-hire performance – because everyone will have high expectations for a candidate that a top-performing employee referred. Those high expectations alone will drive the new hire to perform better to meet those expectations continually.
- A faster hiring process will mean losing fewer candidates to earlier offers – because you will initially know so much about a referred candidate from a top performer. With less background checking needed, your hiring process can be completed weeks earlier. And with faster hiring, you will lose fewer of your top candidates to “earlier offers” that were made by your competitors. And because they are hiring, your hiring managers will receive higher-quality new hires in less time and with less frustration. Your hiring managers will be less frustrated with recruiting, and that may cause them to devote more time to recruiting.
- Top performer referred candidates will be more likely to accept your offer – because referred candidates will be excited about the possibility of working on the same team as the employee that referred them. And they likely know that if it is a referral from a top performer, they will be treated well on the job. The probability that a candidate referred by a top performer will accept your company’s job offer will increase dramatically.
- A larger percentage of your top prospects will find the time to apply– because the candidates that a top employee refers know that they have a significantly higher chance of being interviewed and eventually hired. So a much larger percentage of your top performer-referred candidates will be willing to formally accept becoming a referral.
- Referred candidates will be less likely to drop out – because top-performing employees hope that their referral will be hired. Most of the referring employees will be continually answering questions and keeping their candidate fully informed about all aspects of this opportunity. And because of this continuous support and engagement, a much smaller percentage of your top performer referral candidates will decide to drop out midway through your hiring process.
Implementation Steps For Those That Are Serious about Top Performer Referrals
The first major implementation step is to identify your top-performing employees. You have several choices, including using standard performance appraisal scores, employee output data, or the percentage of their bonus, or simply asking your hiring managers to identify the top 20% of their performers in each job family.
The second implementation step is to communicate with each of your identified top performers to make them aware of your company’s expectation for a handful of referrals each year. This step involves proactively asking your top performers for 1-3 quality referrals each year. A manager can best do that during their standard performance appraisal process. An alternative approach is to have the recruiter for their job family contact them individually at least twice a year (and when feasible, in person).
The third implementation step also involves making your top performers aware when there is an opening in their job family. The typical way to do that is to send each top performer an alert text message or email. Prioritize the alert to those employees who have previously made successful referrals in that job family. And finally, be sure to implement performance metrics in order to continually improve your top performer referral effort.
Note: You can find the top 20 factors that hurt referral programs here.
And One Last Point
If you don’t have much influence with corporate HR, you might assume that there’s little that you can do to generate top performer referrals. However, everyone should be aware that if the hiring manager and the team’s recruiter agree to work closely together within the team. Multiple top performer referrals can still be generated without the help of HR.
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Notes for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
Please help spread his ideas by sharing this with your team and network.
Dr John Sullivan is the author – It first appeared in the 8/11/26 issue of Aggressive Talent Management
