What is future of Employee Referrals?
Employee referrals currently occupy pride of place among all recruiting sources with approximately 40% of all hiring happening through referral programs as per industry research. Organizations are expected to invest even more heavily in technology and other areas to drive up hiring through employee referral programs. The benefits in terms of improved interview to hiring ratio, higher quality of candidates as well as better retention rates make the investment in employee referral program worthwhile. In fact as the war for talent intensifies even further, employee referrals are expected to play an even bigger role in how organizations go about the business of acquiring key talent in the future.
The talent scenario is expected to get even more challenging in the years to come and this will have a big impact on the way employee referral programs are run in future. Leveraging social media connections of employees will remain a key area of growth for employee referral programs. Technology that enables employees to share job openings with entire networks is already being heavily leveraged by organizations. Applications that automate the process of linking job openings with social media profiles is likely to see a big jump in future. This will also make it easier for recruiters to scan employee networks for profiles that match job descriptions. This will in turn lead to employees having to spend less time and effort in locating connections that match the job openings, enabling the entire referral program to work faster and smarter.
Integration of employee referral programs into the mobile platform that allow employees to access the referral program from their mobile devices to refer candidates and post jobs online is also likely to see a quantum leap. Mobile technologies are going to be critical for the success of any referral program as it opens up an entirely new demography of the mobile workforce. Even employees who do not have access to a desktop have access to a mobile device, which is why mobile applications that provide access to employee referral programs on the mobile platform will assume increasing significance in the future.
The third big trend in employee referral programs is going to be the increasing use of Gamification. The use of game techniques in keeping employees engaged and motivated with the employee referral program is going to be the next big draw as employees get aggressive in their hunt for talent.
Giving a popular saying a new twist, one can safely say that “a company is identified by the employees it keeps”. With all companies vying for the same group of talent, we are likely to see a lot more innovation in the recruitment function in general and employee referral programs in particular.
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