It is no secret that many corporate customers of HR solution providers are disgruntled, especially in the applicant tracking market where it has become common to bounce from vendor to vendor every few years despite a lack of significant differentiation in product/service offerings. As vendor-neutral advisors, we're routinely asked to …

In addition, the increased access to the Internet coupled with better hardware and software means that metrics can be calculated almost instantly and reported to almost anyone at minimal costs.  Fields that used to rely on intuition such as marketing, purchasing (now known as supply chain) and manufacturing have made …

Using Existing Contests, Challenges, and Awards Programs The first step is to ask your current top performers in each mission-critical job family what prominent awards and contests already exist in their field. Professional organizations tend to offer the most awards and contests, and could often use sponsors and judges. Focus …

What is a Rolodex Party? Rolodex parties are informal departmental or business unit meetings where top performers are brought into a conference room and are then asked to "download" and share from their personal contacts the names of the very best individuals that they know at other firms. If you …

Most Recruiting Activities Are Not Strategic in Scope Almost everything that an individual recruiter does is intended to resolve an immediate need and is therefore operational or tactical in nature. Because the scope of the outcome is so limited, it is nearly impossible for any single instance to rise to …

Business Impacts of Referral Programs Various academic and internal corporate research has found that employee referral programs can: Produce employees who are more productive on the job. MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Emilio J. Castilla discovered that employees recruited through employee referral programs can have significant performance differentials from …

Basic Characteristics of Excellent Programs In order to gather the “right” metrics about a referral program, you need to know upfront what the critical design elements are that turn good referral programs into great ones. Next, you need to have metrics that cover each of these critical areas if you …

Action Steps for Reenergizing Your Referral Program Reinforce the employee's role in building the team. Great referral programs are not about money; they're about empowering employees to play an active role in building an all-star team for them to work with. Exceptional employees understand that working with the very best …

Lots of Questions While we have written on this topic extensively, sharing what best practices have been observed, documenting what concepts from other functions can be borrowed to drive a program, and highlighting the firms that for lack of a better phrase kick butt, we are aware that program managers …

The Referral Bonus The largest expense item for most referral programs is the referral bonus. Approximately 90 percent of the programs I have encountered use some form or monetary incentive, the largest of which I have seen recently is $40,000. While that might seem extreme, keep in mind that for …