Employee Referrals: From A Candidates Perspective

  • Added:
    Aug 06, 2014
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Employee Referrals: From A Candidates Perspective Photo by Savio Vadakkan

Landing a job in today’s job market is as much about the people you know as your skill set. Knowing the right people in the right organization can land you a job sooner than most other people. This is because organizations place a higher trust on candidates coming through employee referrals than applying through job sites or recruitment agencies. Infact employee referrals might be your best bet to get through to the interview stage.  The trust factor runs high in case you are coming in through an employee referral as most organizations with successful employee referral programs tend to give priority to candidates applying through employee referrals.


While there has been a lot of discussion and debate on how organizations can engage with employees to run a more efficient and successful referral program, there has been little or no thought given to how the referral program can also motivate candidates to actively seek employee referrals as a way of boosting their chances of getting hired. It is only now that organizations have come to realize that externally publicizing the referral program to make potential candidates aware of the referral program can also give a big boost to both talent recruitment as well as employee referrals.

The Candidate Experience Awards 2012 survey from TalentBoard, highlighted some interesting aspects of current recruiting and referral practices of organizations. The survey highlighted that a majority of the candidates were not aware of the referral practices of their current organization and how their hiring chances were likely to increase manifold if they were to apply through employee referrals.

Some of the other findings from the “The Candidate Experience Survey 2012” are given below

• Out of the approximately 8953 candidates who participated in the survey, only about half of them responded saying that they were aware of the fact that the organization they had applied to had an employee referral policy.

• Again, out of the 4500 candidates who knew about the referral policy, only about 1/3rd of them actually used the referral program to apply.


What the survey potently brings out that there are very few candidates who actively seek employee referrals to apply to an organization. Organizations have also not really worked towards promoting the employee referral policy among candidates and have mainly relied only on employees to drive the referral program. With everyone available on social media today, it is infact extremely easy for candidates to seek out referrals from employees who work in the organization they are looking to apply in. Designing the referral program to include candidates as well in the referral program as well can pay rich dividends to the organization in terms of a robust talent hiring.

Author's Profile

Savio Vadakkan is the Marketing Professional at ZALP, a leading employee referral tool. ZALP enables organizations to boost their employee referral hires by implementing an effective employee referral program.


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