Yes dear reader, just in time for Valentine’s Day CareerBuilder tells us what you’ve been suspecting all along: your office mates are mating up. If the survey is to be believed — and why not?; they surveyed 7,780 people who all can’t be pranking us — then almost 4 in 10 workers have dated someone they met on the job.

Awkward, if one of them thinks it’s going places and the other one … you get the idea. Fortunately, 31 percent of those relationships lead to marriage. (Which is no guarantee things won’t get even more awkward a little down the road. But this is the season for love, so ignore our dose of ugly reality. Or read on to the part where we tell you how Challenger, Gray, & Christmas snuck in a warning about office violence.)

HR people out there, this stat’s for you: CareerBuilder says 18 percent of office dating is between boss and their report. Women were more likely to date up than men, 35 percent to 23 percent respectively.

Of the industries reported, you just had to know that hospitality by far (47 percent) has the most co-dating co-workers. Healthcare also made the top five list, which, considering how many parents hoped their offspring would marry a doctor, is no surprise. But financial services (40 percent)? And transportation and utilities (43 percent)? And IT (40 percent)? These also made the top five? Really?

Now moving on to that warning about workers pulling a Valentine’s Day Massacre  from Challenger, Gray & Christmas (hereinafter CG&C). “Some companies are facing an entirely different problem: their workers have lost that loving feeling and the consequences can be dire,” reads the press release we got from the global outplacement firm.

“Often in situations where managers are aware of a problem between two or more coworkers, they merely look the other way, letting the employees work it out amongst themselves.  This may work in some situations, but in others, this hands-off approach can have disastrous results,” says CGC CEO John Challenger.

The press release offers a whole bunch of ideas to increase civility and reduce animosity. Missing from the list, and very conspicuously considering Valentine’s Day started this whole thing, is the free supply of large amounts of chocolate.

A Vowel Please

From the “Can I buy a vowel?” department comes Goood Job, the latest in a long line of companies entering the employee-referral-social media business we’ve talked a lot about (and includes socialcruiter, socialreferral, and many others). In short, here’s how Goood Job works: Employees can opt-in to have their company’s job postings automatically show up on their Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages. Friends can express an interest, filling in short information about themselves on a landing page, and the employee can add a comment (like “Goood guy, worked with him for three years”).

The system tracks employees’ referrals through the hiring process. The employees build up points, like a loyalty program, however you want to set it up — x number of points for referring someone who sends in a resume, y number if it resulted in a hire, etc. — and earn dinners, movie tickets, trips to Paris, the spa, or perhaps even to a spa in Paris. HP and Microsoft in Israel are using the Tel Aviv company for referrals, and Goood Job says both are considering expanding their use globally. The sweetspot, though — or shall we say sweeet spot — are companies in the few-hundred to a few-thousand-employee range, who pay around $1,000-2,500 a month, depending on company size. One client has tripled its number of referrals since using the system. As we began an early-morning demo of the product, one company rep IM’d us to say “Goood Morning.” Cute.

Short Takes

BeKnown as you with a URL all your own. Just go claim your Beknown.com/your-name-here address. Yeah, yeah, we know there are a ton of places to get a vanity addy, but as our best friend’s mother used to say, “What can it hurt?”

Remember the SHRM Members for Transparency? That’s the group that’s taken issue with some of the goings-on at the top levels of the HR professional association. We were starting to unremember them ourselves until up pops an email from the group the other day saying they’re still trying to get a second meeting going with representatives of the big group’s board of directors. The first meeting took 102 days to schedule. The second took a little longer than that. It’s now scheduled for March 4. (Go here and read all about the last meeting.)

Over the years it has come to be accepted that the average number of new hires coming from employee referral programs is somewhere between SHRM’s 24 percent (for non-exempt positions) to about a third. Some programs do much better.

From CareerXroads now comes evidence that the hires from employee referrals are undercounted.

“Referrals permeate the recruiting process more than we think,” says recruiting consultant Gerry Crispin, a CareerXroads principal.

He and his partner, Mark Mehler, surveyed their clients and others about employee referral programs and found that most of the 50 respondents have a referral program, most pay a bonus of some kind, and on average 28 percent of their external hires are referrals.

Most of the results, says Crispin, were expected. However, in comparing data from that admittedly limited, and unscientific survey with the early results of the consultancy’s annual Source of Hire study, “we’re finding referrals are a part of every source or almost every.”

For instance, rehires, a small, but steady source of hires, include a sizable percentage of individuals referred by employees. The rehires may first come to the attention of recruiters through a referral, but when they’re onboarded, the source of hire tends to get reported as a rehire.

It’s a “classification issue,” explains Crispin. A similar situation occurs with sourcers. They will be reported as the source of a hire even when they identified a candidate as a result of a referral from an employee.

Crispin and Mehler included an early indication of the pervasiveness of employee referrals in their survey results, posted online here at SlideShare. The numbers are still being crunched for the forthcoming source of hire survey (tentatively to be titled “Channels of Influence”), so there’s no data cited for the contribution referrals make to these other sources.

However, the share of the pie that referrals make to the total hires attributed to these other sources is labeled. As Crispin observed, “With just what we can count, referral programs make a big contribution.”

Much of the other data in the survey report will be useful to recruiters for comparing their own results. The surveyed companies, the report preface notes, are “large, highly-competitive firms.” Some make upwards of 10,000 hires a year. More, though, make 1,000 or less.

Big or small, two-thirds of the respondents offer a bonus for every referral hire. Most common (44 percent) is $500 for a non-exempt hire. One-in-five will pay $1,000 and a few more (28 percent) will pay that for difficult to fill non-exempt positions.

It takes about 10.4 referrals on average to make a hire. Some companies are either so picky or get so many referrals that only one referral in 25 or more results in a hire.

One other significant stat coming out of the survey is that the majority of employers don’t give the referred candidate any special treatment. Of the 39 percent that do, the comments cited in the results suggest that many don’t do much more than review the resume or application.

On the other hand, 85 percent of the employees who made a referral will get a thank you whether or not a hire is made.

One of the survey’s only surprises, Crispin said, it that employers that don’t dedicate staff to managing and promoting the referral program actually do better than those with staff assigned.

The 53.6 percent of companies that divvy up the work among the recruiting staff average about 33 percent of hires from referrals. Those with some dedicated support average about 24 percent.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Crispin agreed. The result could be just an aberration. Or, he speculated, it could be spreading the work means there’s more overall time invested in the program. Or, it could be the “silo effect” effect, that is when one person is tasked with a job, everyone else leaves things up to them.

“Now that I’ve seen that,” Crispin notes, “I’d be curious to see if someone could replicate it … for now, it’s just an artifact.”

In 2011 at Quintiles, however, an adventurous theme was implemented (one I hinted at a year ago).

In addition to the cash rewards, successful referrers would also be entered into a grand prize drawing for an exclusive trip of their choice with National Geographic Expeditions.

This adventurous approach heightened engagement. Employee referrals began to constantly rise. Three winners, in each of three regions, were randomly picked by Chairman Dr. Dennis Gillings at the close of the fourth quarter. The theme was well received and emphasizes our culture valuing adventure and experience, as well as encouraging world knowledge and culture sharing.

The employee referral program for 2012 holds more ambitious incentives. A mid-year winner will get to attend the 2012 Summer Olympics in London! This reinforces the concepts of value of competition, being the best, pushing the limits, global cultures all coming together for positive reasons, and valuing experiences and memories. We are looking for the world’s best talent — just like the Olympics attracts.

The question is: why haven’t these tools and technologies made any significant difference?

If we look at other professions, it is clear that technology is not what makes the real difference. Take building as an example. Using only primitive hand tools, carpenters and masons from Roman times on crafted buildings that are enduring and emulated. The construction methods they used are studied and copied, while their tools gather dust in museums. Chinese accountants used abacuses to keep their books and sailors had glorified rowboats to explore the world’s oceans. It turns out that knowing how to do something is a far more critical skill than what tools are used to do it. Tools do not cause change and transformation, but methods and processes do.

The skills involved in building, accounting, or sailing are what make the difference between success and failure and often between life and death. Those who have improved the methods of building — the ones who figured out how to build skyscrapers and elevators — have contributed more to our progress than have the tools they used.

Technology saves labor and time and often lets us do things we could not do with our own muscles or brains, but it is not a substitute for core knowledge or for understanding how to do something or for human behavior.

And that is most likely why recruiting has not changed. While recruiters have many new tools, they are using traditional processes and methods without much innovation. This is most likely because, despite the hype about a talent shortage, there is really not a major problem finding talented people. If fact, most recruiters would be bored if their job became too easy — and many enjoy the hunt. Innovation usually occurs when there is an unsolvable problem or a major problem or a crisis, and recruiting has yet to run into any of those.

But what could be is still interesting. What would an efficient, updated recruiting process look like? Here are a few ideas that I think might work.

If anyone has already tried them or plans on giving them a try, I would like to hear from you in the comments section.

Idea 1: Stop any branding activities and focus totally on referrals. If you are in a nationwide or global firm with a known reputation, branding is a secondary concern. You already attract people because of your product or service brand and most likely have a pipeline of good candidates. Whenever you have an opening, just let employees know and ask them to use their networks to bring in any additional people you might need.

Referrals are free, fast, and effective. Incentives are not really needed and may actually cause employees to reach out to less-than-optimal candidates in the chance of getting whatever reward your offer. Instead give the employees who refer the best candidates, whether they are hired or not, a title such as “Preferred Referrer” or “Trusted Referrer,” and give anyone they refer priority consideration. This will incentivize others to become a titled referrer and raise the bar on the type of candidates you get.

Idea 2: Use online assessments and reduce interviews. Forget screening interviews, meet and greets, and extensive resume reviews. Instead invest in developing one or two screening tests that can be given online, are scored instantly, and provide both you and the candidate with feedback.

These kinds of screening tools can reduce your workload, improve the candidate experience, and result in much better candidates. The challenge is to develop the right tests that actually screen for the characteristics that are important for the job or for the organization.

There may need to be several tests for different positions or levels, but none of this is more costly or time-consuming than endless phone screens and interviews. I would go so far as to say that recruiters should never interview anyone in person. By implementing online screening and eliminating face-to-face interviews, you could potentially expect a recruiter to handle 20-50% more open requisitions.

There are many firms who can do this for reasonable costs, and the online testing and screening business is growing rapidly. Charles Handler, one of the other writers on ERE, has just released a book cataloging and commenting on most testing services available today.

Idea 3: Use video interviews heavily. Video interviews are a powerful and effective way to do more with less and improve legal compliance.

Video interviews are no longer taboo, and many candidates find them much more effective and less stressful than face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews are expensive and time consuming and most of the time lead nowhere. Probably 75% of all interviews do not lead to an offer because of poor screening and poor candidate qualification. By conducting one live interview that is recorded, many people can view the same interview and evaluate the same responses. This leads to consistency, the lack of which is the greatest legal issue with multi-person, live interviews. By recoding the interview, there is proof that the interviews were done legally and that no discrimination occurred.

Idea 4: Train recruiters and hiring managers thoroughly on closing candidates. Make sure every recruiter and as many hiring managers as possible know how to identify potential acceptance issues and how to overcome objections.

Most acceptance failures are because someone — a recruiter or a hiring manager — did not pick up on signs that a candidate had reservations or issues that would be difficult to overcome: perhaps a reluctant spouse, a nagging doubt about the organization or the project, a desire to stay at their current employer, and so on.

It takes practice and training to notice these things and many recruiters are not well trained to not only notice the potential problem, but to deal with it. I often recommend that recruiters take a traditional sales training class where these skills are and the methods to overcome them are taught.

Idea 5: Communicate with mobile technology and via social media. Getting feedback to candidates regularly and fast is one of the ways to differentiate your organization from other and to get first-mover advantage with a candidate.

Most candidates today are more than willing to receive feedback and updates via their Facebook, LinkedIn, or other accounts. Email is fine, but experiment with other methods that cut down the time you spend and get the word out faster. Hiring managers should consider interviewing candidates using Skype or other tools. You could develop a mobile app to provide feedback or updates.

There are probably at least a dozen more ideas that you could try that would lower costs, improve speed, and provide higher quality candidates. But, then again, by doing it the way we always have, we ensure job security — for a while.

The German company has about 336,000 employees, 1,640 locations, and about 60,000 people, and growing, in the U.S.

Rachel Romaszewski, who recruits for Siemens’ energy business, and I talk about the skills shortage and what’s being done about it. She tells me (out of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) which social media site is working well, which one works less well, and which one’s hit or miss.

“We are just growing like crazy,” she says, in the seven-minute video, below.

It’s always better to be prepared than surprised.

By definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention.

But you should certainly do your own thinking. I recommend that you start by examining this past year…

2011 Was The Year of Social Media

2011 was a tough year for many in talent management, but despite compressed budgets, organizations continued to hire and develop talent. One factor that seemed to invade nearly every high-level functional discussion was social media. It’s clear that Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter will play a dominate role in recruiting and development best practices in years to come.

Not surprisingly, 2011 saw no fewer than 40 new vendors emerge to help organizations use social media to attract referrals. We also started to see early stage tools to use social media in talent assessment (pre/post hire) as well as applicant/candidate/employee experience management. New tools brought much enhanced visibility into talent issues, but most talent-management metrics continue not to resonate with key leaders outside of the HR function.

2012 Will Be “The Year of the Mobile Platform”

By the end of next year, even the skeptics will have to admit that the mobile platform will have become the dominant communications and interaction platform by early-adopting best-practice organizations. The capabilities afforded users of smartphones and tablet devices grows immensely day by day. Long before unified inboxes existed for the desktop, smart device users could see all incoming e-mail, social messaging, text messaging, and voice and video messaging in a single place.

Tablets will become the virtual classroom, and an emerging class of tools will let employees manage almost every aspect of their professional life digitally. During the next year, talent management leaders need to invest heavily supporting execution of talent management initiatives across mobile.

The Additional Top Nine!

Intense hiring competition will return in selected areas — global economic issues will persist for years to come, but the global war for talent will continue spiking in key regions an industries. While growth has slowed somewhat in China, Australia and Southeast Asia — including India — continue to see dramatic demand for skilled talent. In the U.S. and Europe, demand is still largely limited to certain industries where skills shortages have been an issue for years.

In high tech inclusive of medical technologies, 2012 will see a significant escalation in the war for top talent. As innovators and game changers step out of established tech firms like Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, and Zynga, a whole new breed to tech startups will be born each vying for the best of the best. While recruiting will move forward at a breathtaking pace, so too will “rapid” leadership development.

Retention issues will increase dramatically — almost every survey shows that despite high engagement scores, more than a majority of employees are willing to quit their current job as soon as a better opportunity comes along. I am predicting that turnover rates in high-demand occupations will increase by 25% during the next year and because most corporate retention programs have been so severely degraded, retention could turn out to be the highest-economic-impact area in all of talent management.

Rather than the traditional “one-size-fits-all” retention strategy, a targeted personalized approach will be required if you expect to have a reasonable chance to retain your top talent.

Social media increases its impact by becoming more data-driven — most firms jumped on the social media bandwagon, but unfortunately the trial-and-error approach used by most has produced only mediocre results. Adapting social media tools from the business coupled with strong analytics will allow a more focused approach that harnesses and directs the effort of all employees on social media. Talent leaders will increasingly see the value of a combination of internal and external social media approaches for managing and developing talent.

Remote work changes everything in talent management — the continued growth of technology, social media, and easy communications now makes it possible for most knowledge work and team activities to occur remotely. Allowing top talent to work “wherever they want to work” improves retention and makes recruiting dramatically easier.

Unfortunately, even though it is now possible for as much as 50% of a firm’s jobs to be done remotely, manager and HR resistance has limited the trend. Fortunately, managers and talent management leaders have begun to realize that teamwork, learning, development, recruiting, and best-practice sharing can now successfully be accomplished using remote methods. Firms like IBM and Cisco have led the way in reducing and eliminating barriers to remote work.

The need for speed shifts the balance between development and recruiting — historically, best practice within corporations has been to build and develop primarily from within. However, as the speed of change in business continues to increase and the number of firms that copy the “Apple model” (where firm is continually crossing industry boundaries) increases, talent managers will need to rethink the “develop internally first” approach.

In many cases, recruiting becomes a more viable option because there simply isn’t time for current employees to develop completely new skills. As a result, the trend will be to continually shift the balance toward recruiting for immediate needs and the use of contingent labor for short-duration opportunities and problems.

Employee referrals are coupled with social media — the employee referral program in many organizations is operated in isolation as are the organizations’ social media efforts, but talent managers are beginning to realize that the real strength of social media is relationship-building by your employees.

With proper coordination, employee relationships can easily be turned into employee referrals. This realization will lead to a shift away from recruiters and toward relying on employees to build social media contacts and relationships. The net result will be that as many as 60% of all hires will come from the combined efforts. The strength of these relationships will lead to better assessment and the highest-quality hires from employee referrals.

Employer branding returns — Employer branding and building talent communities are the only long-term strategies in recruiting. True branding is rarely practiced (hint: it’s not recruitment marketing) especially in the cash-strapped function of today, but years of layoffs, cuts in compensation, and generally bad press for business in general may force firms to invest in true branding. The increased use of social media and frequent visits to employee criticism sites (like Glassdoor.com), make not managing employer brand perception a risky proposition. While corporations will never control their employer brand, they can monitor and influence in a direction that isn’t catastrophic to recruiting and retention.

The candidate experience is finally getting the attention it deserves — Organizations have never treated candidates as well as they did their customers, but the high jobless rate has allowed corporations to essentially abuse some applicants. As competition for talent increases and as more applicants visit employer criticism sites like Glassdoor.com, talent leaders will be forced to modify their approach.

At the very least, firms will more closely monitor candidate experience metrics as they realize that treating applicants poorly can not only drive away other high-quality applicants but it can also lose them sales and customers.

Forward-looking metrics begin to dominate — Almost all current talent management and recruiting metrics are backward looking, in that they tell you what happened in the past. Other business functions like supply chain, production, and finance have long championed the use of “forward-looking” or predictive metrics and the time is finally coming when talent management leaders will shift their metrics emphasis. Forward-looking metrics can not only improve decision-making but they can also help to prevent or mitigate future talent problems.

Other Things to Keep Your Eye On…

In addition to the major trends highlighted above, there are 12 additional “hot” topics to keep your eye on:

• Risk identification — almost every other business function has already adopted a risk management strategy. So the time is coming when talent management will be forced to adopt a similar strategy and set of metrics. This program will not only cover HR legal issues but also the economic “risk” associated with weak hiring, the absence of developed leaders, and the cost of turnover of key talent.
• Prioritization — continued budget and resource pressure will force talent management leaders to prioritize their services, business units, key jobs, and high-value managers/employees.
• Integration — there will be increasing pressure for talent management functions to more closely integrate and work seamlessly.
• Expedited leadership development — as more baby-boom leaders and managers actually begin to retire, there will be increased pressure for expedited leadership development — specifically solutions that develop talent remotely using social media tools and within months rather than years.
• Competitive analysis — the increasingly competitive business world has forced almost every function to be more externally focused. Although HR has a long history of being internally focused and not being “highly competitive,” there is increasing pressure to become more business-like and to adopt an “us-versus-them” perspective. That means conducting competitive analysis and making sure that every key talent management function produces superior results to those at competitors.
• Contingent workers — as continuous business volatility becomes the “new normal,” the increased use and the improved management of contingent workers will become essential for agility and flexibility.
• Unionization — there is a reasonable chance that actions by the NLRB will increase union power and make it easier for unions to gain acceptance at private employers.
• Recruiting at industry events — as industry events return to popularity, recruiting at them will again become an effective tool for recruiting top and diverse talent.
• Location software — talent managers will begin to realize that software that allows you to check-in and see who is within close geographic proximity has great value and many still unidentified uses.
• Hire before they do — most firms will restrict their hiring until the turnaround actually begins. However, your firm must have a talent pool or pipeline developed, so that you can hire immediately and capture the top talent right before your competitors realize the downturn is over.
• Assessment continues to improve — vendors, software, and tools continue to improve in this area that will become increasingly important.
• Increase your revenue impact — increased economic pressures will continue the trend of forcing all functions (including talent management) to convert their functional results into business impacts in dollars. Talent management will face increasing pressure to directly demonstrate how their hiring, retention, development, etc. is focused, so that it directly increases and maximizes corporate revenues.

Final Thoughts

A recent survey of CEOs rates talent management as the No. 1 area where CEOs expect dramatic change during the next year. Given this increased attention, it’s even more critical that talent management and recruiting leaders set aside time to conduct a SWOT assessment (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to identify where they are and where they need to be.

The “new” talent management leader must be more strategic, more proactive, and more business-like, and that means getting your entire staff to begin thinking about and planning for the game-changing events, trends, and opportunities that will occur during the next year. It’s time to realize the “but-we-are-overwhelmed-and-too-busy” excuse for not forecasting and planning is wearing thin.

Several weeks ago ere.net published an article that asked the question “what are the dumbest things that recruiters do.” After surveying recruiters on ere.net, Twitter, and at the recent SMA symposium in Seattle, it is clear that most feel the dumbest thing recruiters do is…

Not managing the candidate experience — the candidate experience is the perception of the sum of interactions with an organization throughout the hiring process. It includes every communication, the design of the process, the fairness of process elements, the quality of information exchanged, and the honesty with which questions and concerns are addressed. Providing a poor candidate experience can have many negative consequences, including an increased candidate dropout rate, negative word-of-mouth, and decreased loyalty to the overall brand.

The rest of the “Top 10” are…

Expecting dull position descriptions to attract — potential applicants assume that the company puts its best foot forward when it describes a job. So when they compare your dull, legalistic description with your competitor’s more compelling description, they will simply apply elsewhere. The net result is that you lose candidates unnecessarily, harm your employer brand, and you will eventually frustrate your hiring managers.

Not taking advantage of employee referrals — the best-practice firms approach 50% referral hires (the percentage of all external hires who come from referrals). Failing to fully use referrals means that you will miss out on a large number of high-quality, prescreened, and presold candidates. Because employees are no longer doing some of the recruiting work, your recruiting workload will increase.

Not learning the business — obviously if you can’t speak “their language” and you don’t understand their problems, hiring managers will be less responsive to your requests. Your lack of knowledge will also make it more difficult to communicate with, to sell, and to build relationships with candidates.

Using the same recruiting process for different level jobs — higher-level jobs require a different level of service, knowledge, and relationship-building. So using the same process that you use for lower-level jobs on more sophisticated, technical, or management jobs will result in fewer returned calls, a higher candidate dropout rate, and lower-quality hires.

Making slow hiring decisions — the very best candidates are gone quickly, so a drawn-out process or slow decision-making will likely mean that candidates with multiple offers will be gone. Managers will also become frustrated if a slow recruiting process means losing the best.

Assuming interviews are accurate — interviews are traditionally weak predictors but poorly executed interviews dramatically increase the chances of making a major hiring error. Poorly designed interviews may also screen out innovators and turnoff top candidates, because they have not felt challenged.

Using active sourcing approaches for passive candidates — posting your jobs using active sourcing approaches like job boards, newspaper ads, and job fairs means that the 75% of the workforce that is not actively looking for a job will never see them.

Not prioritizing jobs — focusing on low-value jobs with little business or revenue impact will anger your managers and reduce their business results. It may eventually lead to lower recruiting budgets, after executives see that your hiring is not prioritized and in line with their business priorities.

Not identifying job acceptance criteria — if you don’t proactively ask for their job acceptance criteria, you can only guess about what it will take to get a top candidate to say “yes.” Although it is ranked as #10, not tailoring your recruiting marketing and candidate-selling approaches to the decision criteria of top candidates almost guarantees that you will lose these candidates. Because these individuals have choices, they will simply wait until an opportunity comes along that precisely fits their requirements and expectations.

Final Thoughts

Nearly 80% of CEOs select talent management as the business area that requires the most change. As a recruiter, if you are going to dramatically change, you have only two basic choices, 1) stop doing the dumb things that negatively impact your results or 2) start doing smarter and more effective things. The “stop doing dumb things” choice is probably the easier of the two because it doesn’t require you to learn anything new.

So if you are recruiter or recruiting manager with limited time and resources, we recommend that you use this “dumb things” list to begin the process of changing and improving your recruiting.

I’ve listed a few responses below and included some dialogue regarding pros and cons of each. Hopefully this discussion will help recruiters and recruiting leaders focus their energies on those tools that actually bring value to their organizations.

This list is presented in no particular order.

Employee Referrals: Traditional employee referral programs tend to fail because they don’t excite employees. Too often referrals are advertised on the intranet, posters in the break room, or distributed via internal mass emails, so this communication just becomes background noise. These programs don’t engage the vast majority of your employee base.

If recruiters, however, only had a referral program as their sole launching pad for filling positions, they could have solid success. Instead of advertising the program, recruiters would pick up the phone and proactively ask for referrals from employees on a regular basis. From that starting point, recruiters could have rich and thorough conversations with referrals from their current employees who may be the right fit for a position or point them to the right candidate. This high-touch methodology would certainly turn up passive candidates that none of your competitors are actively pursuing. The sheer size of your employees’ first and second level connections could fill a talent pipeline for a long while.

Existing ATS: In general, most companies underuse their current database of candidates. Compounding this reality is the fact they’ve paid a lot of money to attract candidates to their application process in the first place. For large, well-established organizations, an ATS could mean access to millions of candidates. The biggest challenge then becomes effectively mining the database, but left with only one recruiting approach, relying on an ATS could very well be the best option. If used wisely, by creating talent communities and folders, an ATS can be a great stand-alone recruiting tool. Positions not filled directly by candidates housed in the database, could lead to referrals and hires down the road.

LinkedIn: Having a dedicated recruiter for LinkedIn searches, introductions, and resulting conversations can result in attractive talent. Since LinkedIn allows recruiters to quickly locate candidates who appear to be a close match to their needs, this tool has a great advantage over several options listed here. However, recruiters tend to start these conversations cold, and this barrier can create resistance to success. For an organization with a low volume of high-niche positions, LinkedIn could be the best go-to tool.

Search Engine Sourcing: Starting a search with the empty box of a search engine can be a daunting first step, but top-notch sourcers can unearth contact information and initiate conversations with talent that no one else is engaging. The weakness of this approach is the energy and time it takes to find candidates. Although much of the search engine process can be automated across several sites, the process still has flaws since connectivity to these candidates is usually pretty weak (as opposed to a referral) so you may have to turn over a lot of rocks to find an interested candidate.

The Phone: Not to be overly simplistic, the old-school recruiters might think it’s best to just start making cold calls to competitors as their starting point. Since fewer recruiters are pounding the phone these days this could be a fairly effective, if not time-consuming, activity. For companies with a high volume of openings this might not be the most practical approach.

Job Boards: This is an obvious choice to discount as a main/only source to find talent. Not only does post and pray not produce the best candidate pool, it also is the only expensive option listed here. However, I would say it has one advantage over all the others above: ease of use. For small companies without robust ATS’s that are mainly filling low-level positions, this may actually be the best option, especially if they don’t have dedicated recruiting support. Most companies are much more complex and require more assertive tactics to fill their positions.

I would love to hear other recruiters’ thoughts on what tools/methods they would use if they were left with only one way to fill positions. Additionally, the common thread in most of these techniques is the ability to engage a candidate and then ask for referrals — this is the relationship nature of recruiting. Those recruiters that are strong on the relational side of the business will always find ways to be successful, regardless of the tools or techniques they are using.

Silkroad technology unveiled something it’s calling Point, a different kind of talent (or is it performance?) management product that’s innovative and even a little unnerving at first. It’s certainly nothing like what we have come to expect from human capital systems.

Meanwhile Jobvite, working at the recruiting end of the talent spectrum, released a Facebook app that neatly complements its Jobvite Source social referral tools. Jobvite’s new social app works entirely within Facebook, connecting users with jobs and telling them who among their friends might be a good match. Apply for a job and the candidate gets to monitor the status of their application, all while still on Facebook.

Jobvite has been leveraging employee social connections for the past few years. The system required a company’s employees to work through Jobvite Source to enable the system to access their connections, search out and suggest matches, and then send referrals to those friends or connections. Now, the new Facebook app allows all the action to occur on the social network, making it simpler and easier for an employee to refer friends for jobs. It wouldn’t be right to call it passive job referral, but it’s undoubtedly going to increase the number of referrals because it’s just quicker and more top of mind.

From a candidate’s perspective, the ability to check on the status of an application is a definite plus. The app also allows candidates to apply for a job directly from Facebook, using either an uploaded resume, work, and education they’ve listed on their Facebook profile (but none of that other stuff), or their LinkedIn info.

For now, offering candidates a choice of what they’ll use to apply is wise; fewer than half of Facebook users have completed even some of the education and work sections off their profiles. However with the network’s changes, particularly the coming Timeline feature, Facebook users will find compelling reasons to fill in those details. Which brings us to Silkroad Point.

It’s not a social networking site or tool as we might think. It’s more of a social and professional analytical tool to assess the impact an employee has on the operation of the company. It’s a means of measuring the influence of workers, in a way that managers only sometimes are able to do.

Let me give you an example. One of your direct reports does a good job on the work you assign. But what may not always be obvious is how much of a resource that person is to others in the department, and even to those in other work groups. Point attempts to assess that.

In that sense, Point is somewhat like Klout or other systems and tools that attempt to measure a person’s social media presence. But in this case, Silkroad is looking at their influence and qualitative value to the company. However, scoring this all is a subjective undertaking, agreed Silkroad’s COO Brian Platz, who walked me through a demo last week.

Among the many components Point takes account of are such things as the number of articles a person posts and how many of their co-workers read it and commented on it. Since Point integrates with all the Silkroad modules, it knows when a worker has taken and completed training and how well they did. That raises the score.

But scores can drop, too. Skills needed for a job can change; not having them, or not being as fresh as a peer, can decrease your skill.

What’s unnerving is seeing an actual rating for what we all know intuitively, but don’t generally attempt to quantify. Some people — and not just bosses — do have more influence than others. Platz says that Point’s analysis is an effort to get at that undocumented value. “Is it scientifically valid?” he said, “I don’t make that claim now.

After thinking about it, I’m not sure how critical a strict scientific validity is, or even if it’s all that necessary. Point is certainly no less scientific than most of what managers use for the annual performance review. In some ways, it’s actually a whole lot more valuable, alerting managers to those parts of what a worker does that sometimes go unseen and therefore undervalued.

Platz agrees that as a new, and innovative tool, there’s the possibility of some tinkering down the road. For one, Silkroad currently decides the weighting to be given to the multiple elements Point measures. He says there’s some thinking that eventually companies may want to do their own weighting. Other fine-tuning is also likely.

Point deserves a good look by Silkroad users and the company deserves credit for attempting to find a way to address all those other things an employee does that too often don’t get valued.

V. Program Responsiveness Features

Being responsive to those who refer and the referrals they submit are critical features that drive program loyalty, participation, and engagement.

1. Rapid response to a referral is critical – a lack of responsiveness to employee referrals is the #1 program killer. The best programs set a target of getting feedback to the referrer and the referred individual within 48 – 72 hours of submission (Aricent & AmTrust Bank).
2. Expedited interviewing – some firms make a commitment to decide whether to interview/not interview all referrals within a week. Others make a more narrow commitment, which is to actually schedule an interview with all “A” quality employee referral candidates within a week of receiving their referral (Owens Corning).
3. Referrals must be tagged and the processing expedited – in the best programs, all referral applications are tagged in order to measure program effectiveness. In addition, the tagged referrals are given a priority for processing (i.e. fast tracked). This is necessary in order to ensure that both the employee and the referred individual feel like they are “special” (Accenture).
4. “On the spot” screening – consider developing a process where resumes collected at the referral desk undergo instant screening followed by instant feedback to the employee and the candidate (Tata consultancy).

VI. Communicating with employees and applicants

High-performing referral programs require frequent and effective communications.

1. Personalize and target your communications – broad communications addressed to all employees almost always produce disappointing results. Instead, develop customized or personalized promotions and campaigns. Write personalized e-mails, tweets, or Facebook entries to targeted job families, well-connected individuals, and top performers alerting them to critical needs in their area. Periodically push relevant job openings that require referrals only to the narrow list of appropriate employees (Amazon & CACI International).
2. Provide periodic employee notifications after a referral is made — employees are almost always nervous about whether their referrals were any good and what is going to happen to their colleague. The best practice is to electronically notify employees immediately when their referral is accepted/rejected, if the candidate is invited for an interview and when the candidate is finally hired or rejected.
3. Provide periodic feedback to applicants – prospects who have been referred are also frequently nervous about their chances. At the very least they should be electronically notified that there referral has been received and accepted. These notifications can also include an overview of what they can expect, including the steps in the process, frequently asked questions, and the likely timeframe before any decision is made.
4. Offer an online chat feature with employees – one of the best ways to reach busy and hesitant employees with questions about the ERP is through an online chat feature (Aricent).
5. Develop and use referral champions – a powerful way to inspire employees to refer is to use senior leaders as referral champions. These executive champions should participate in communications and help to explain to employees the importance to the business of the positions being recruited for (Accenture).
6. Consider a follow-up meeting after a great referral – after a great referral, schedule a follow-up meeting with the person. Goals include to hand-deliver the bonus, to thank them (and their manager), to identify and then learn from their approach, and to ask them if they know any other stars. (Amazon).
7. Provide direct feedback to employees on weak referrals — make sure that you provide feedback to individual employees who make weak referrals, so that they know what they did wrong and how to improve.
8. Keep top referral rejects interested – top referrals who were not hired because they lost out to an exceptional candidate should be kept for consideration of future openings. Your goal should be to develop a pool of these potential “future hires” and to build a long-term relationship with them by continually communicating through periodic messages or an e-newsletter. Also “push” future relevant jobs to them. In order to keep them excited, consider telling all A+ rated referrals who were not hired what specifically they could do to improve their chances.
9. 24/7 help desk – large firms with a high volume of referrals can open 24×7 referral help desks to provide information and to answer questions, much like a concierge (Tata and Aricent).

VII. Specialized referral approaches to consider

In addition to providing a broad employee referral program, it is also wise to consider implementing some specialized subprograms.

1. Proactively approaching target employees – most referral programs communicate using a broad impersonal approach; a superior proactive approach involves recruiters seeking out individual employees who have a high likelihood of making a quality referral for a specific job. Employees and managers are usually approached on a one-to-one basis (and often in person) and are asked to provide the names of a handful of individuals who fit a targeted set of criteria. Because the approach is personal and targeted, the response rate and referral quality are significantly higher. When top performers and executives are proactively approached, frequently they are willing only to provide “names” alone, with no follow-up or resume (Google & Aricent)
2. Boomerang referrals – this focused approach emphasizes maintaining a continuous relationship with high-quality former employees (corporate alumni) in the hopes of someday rehiring them through an employee referral. Top corporate alumni can also be asked to provide referrals (Aricent & Booz Allen).
3. Reference referrals – this approach emphasizes approaching the top references of last year’s top hires as referral sources. They are thanked for their helpful reference and asked if they “know anyone else equally as qualified.”
4. College hire referrals – because of their widespread usage of social media, college students are well-connected with other students in their field around the world. College referral programs have proven to produce excellent referrals for both interns and permanent hires. Last year’s graduates who you hired from key schools should also be proactively approached for names (Endeca, Aricent, & Intuit).
5. Onboarding referrals — make it a regular part of onboarding to highlight the employee referral program and to provide new hires with a referral information kit. Also make them aware that you have a recruiting culture and that they are expected to continually provide referrals. Each new hire should be asked to immediately provide top referrals from their former firm. (Aricent & Eli Lily)
6. Referrals for executive positions – because corporate executives are highly visible and accessible in today’s world of social networks, vacant executive positions should also be filled through referrals. In order to be successful, the executive referrals component requires an extremely high level of customer service and candidate experience. These “choose-your-own-leader” type programs can empower employees to get better leaders (Aricent).
7. Internal movement referrals – employee referrals can also be an effective tool for improving internal movement. Employees need to be rewarded for making successful referrals for key internal openings and managers must be rewarded for “releasing talent.” An internal recruiting team may also be used to speed up internal placements (Booz Allen, Sodexo, & Microsoft).
8. Offer letter referrals – this extremely aggressive program requires you to ask potential new hires to provide referrals as a condition for becoming an employee (FirstMerit).

VIII. Referral program technology

Globalization of referrals and the requirement for fast processing of applications mandate that programs use the latest in technology, which in this field advances by leaps and bounds.

1. Allow employees to submit using multiple platforms – provide your employees with multiple options for submitting referrals (web, email, phone, text). Providing multiple options can make it easier for busy employees to make referrals 24/7, while they are “on the run.”
2. Application website flexibility – the referral website should offer regular and expedited options. The first channel should provide the detailed information that first-time referrers’ need, but the second channel should be designed for experienced referrers, so that they can quickly jump directly to the referral submission page (Accenture).
3. A website that allows employees to track the progress of their referrals – an internal site can allow employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well as their accumulated bonuses (Accenture and Aricent).
4. Offer referral program kiosks – because not all employees have continuous access to a computer, standalone referral kiosks often need to be strategically placed around the facility. These kiosks can be used to input referrals and to provide information about open positions. They can include advice, frequently asked questions, and a calendar of upcoming referral events (Aricent).
5. Online assessment tools – develop and offer online assessment tools so that the skills of referral candidates can be quickly assessed. Also consider another option of offering tools that allow the prospects to self-assess themselves before they agree to become a referral.
6. Online interview scheduling – develop a website that allows referrals who have been chosen for interviews to self-scheduling their own interview times (Alaska Airlines).

IX. Process management and the administrative aspects of referral programs

The effective administration of the ERP is an extremely important component for producing great referrals.

1. Proactively discourage weak referrals – help to avoid a clogged referral queue by developing a process that discourages “junk referrals.” Discourage your employees from referring their relatives, and strangers who “approach them.” In order to ensure that your employees are screening out weak prospects, require employees to thoroughly know and assess their referral’s work, their skills, their interest in the job, and their cultural fit. You can also require employees to rate their knowledge of their candidates on a 1 to 5 scale. Requiring this level of knowledge and assessment helps to make the employee own the quality of their referral, and it minimizes the wasting of hiring managers and recruiters time on weak referrals (Agilent & Aricent).
2. Establish referral targets for managers – managers and teams produce a higher percentage of referrals when they are provided up front with specific referral targets or goals for each quarter. Also rank managers from best to worst on their ERP performance (Aricent & Acumen Solutions).
3. Encourage internal competition – offering rewards for early-bird referrals (i.e. the first submitted) can foster competition and encourage employees to respond quickly. Holding contests between rival business ynits can also foster a competitive mindset around producing referrals. An employee scorecard that lists the employee’s personal referral success rate allows employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well is accumulated bonuses. One organization sends their iRefer dashboard to all employees to encourage competition and to allow employees to contact top referrers for advice (Tata Consultancy & Aricent).
4. Continually monitor referral vendors – maintain continuous awareness of the services offered by the numerous established and emerging vendors in the referral area. Even if you don’t use them, be aware of the concepts, the technologies, and the outsourcing options that are emerging in this area.
5. You need dedicated program staff and recruiters – the best programs develop a referral team and assign responsive recruiters to specialize in referrals (Owens Corning, Microsoft, & Amazon)
6. Develop an SLA – you can increase the responsiveness of line managers by instituting service-level agreements that spell out expectations for both managers and the ERP program staff (Aricent & Tata Consultancy).
7. Develop a best practice sharing process – periodically survey or interview both new hires from referrals and employees (with successful and failed referrals) in order to identify what worked and what didn’t. Develop a formal process (i.e.  a Wiki, listserv, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or online forum) that allows employees to ask questions and to easily post and share best practices for finding prospects, building relationships, and selling prospects.
8. Monitor progress and continually improve using metrics – periodically assess the satisfaction of employees, hiring managers, and individuals who were referred. Other key metrics that should be tracked include new-hire job performance, new-hire retention, boomerang rehires, offer acceptance ratio, diversity referrals, and referrals as a percentage of all hires (Aricent & Accenture).

Some Benchmark ERP Milestones

Some “best in the world” metrics to compare yourself to include:

• Participation rate (% of employees with at least one referral): 71% -Aricent
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (with a bonus): 78% -AmTrust
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (without paying a bonus): 70% -AmTrust
• Employee satisfaction rate: 98% -Aricent
• Percent of boomerang rehires through referrals: 72% -Aricent
• Most globalized ERP: operates in 40 countries -Microsoft

Referral Program Killers To Avoid

If you expect great results, in addition to providing some of the above advanced features and best practices, you must consciously avoid the following 13 ERP killers:

1. An ERP that is slow to respond to referrals and questions
2. Delaying the reward/bonus payment for three to six months
3. Referral spamming of employees with too many messages
4. Failing to periodically re-energize the ERP
5. No ATS marking of ERP applications so that you can track program effectiveness
6. Equal rewards for all jobs
7. No feedback on weak or bad referrals
8. Individual recruiters are allowed to “ignore” referrals
9. Not tracking referral rates by manager
10. Too many rules and restrictions
11. Not weighting referrals based on the referrer’s track record
12. ERP applications are not given priority treatment in the recruiting process or ATS
13. ERP program manager turnover

Too many organizations task management of the program to a loosely organized committee that rarely invests the time required to build anything more than a conservative, basic program. Despite the conservative approach taken, ERPs continue to outproduce every other external recruiting source (volume and quality of hire). In world class firms, the performance of ERPs is often double that of the average, but they often have dedicated management and a host of features few firms invest the time and resources to support.

If your firm is in the process of developing a new program or redesigning your old one and you are looking to move beyond the mediocre, this checklist should give a number of ideas for building a program that will give you a competitive advantage.

Each of these advanced features has already been proven to be effective, and they can work for you provided that you have the courage to implement them.

70 Advanced Employee Referral Program Features

This list of exceptional program features has been broken into nine different categories, including:

1. Strategic features
2. Features that improve referral program quality
3. Features that help sell the organization
4. Features that improve the effectiveness of rewards
5. Features that drive program responsiveness
6. Program communication features
7. Features that extend the reach of the ERP — i.e. special programs
8. Technology features
9. Process management features

Firms that have done pioneering work with regards to each feature are cited in parenthesis.

I. Strategic ERP features

There are several strategic actions which serve as the foundation for any effective ERP.

1. Prioritize your jobs — referral programs that focus their resources on attracting top talent, game-changers, and innovators produce the highest ROI. The best programs do not cover all jobs and instead prioritize high-impact and hard-to-fill jobs. Don’t waste employee time and burden your program’s administration with “junk referrals” and referrals for jobs that can be adequately filled through normal sources (Aricent).
2. Link social media & mobile efforts with the ERP — since the explosion of social media, you cannot have a well-performing referral program without also having a strong social media effort. This close link is required because most of the connections and the relationships that your employees now build with other professionals occur via social platforms. Employees who spend dozens of hours building these relationships must be able to easily convert them into referrals and those referrals must of course be handled with a high level of customer service. Close coordination and smooth handoffs between the programs are essential (Sodexo Star Finder).
3. Link employer branding with the ERP – having a strong employer brand makes it easier for your employees to approach and build relationships with other professionals. Having a strong employer brand and external image are also essential for convincing prospects to accept a referral. As a result, the two functions must work closely together to ensure that it is easy for prospects to find compelling stories and to locate information about the firm’s best practices and any best-place-to-work awards that the firm has won (Google & Sodexo).
4. Prioritize your employee’s referrals based on their past success – the most effective programs identify employees with a successful track record of previous referrals. Referrals from those employees are prioritized and given expedited treatment. Employees with bad referral track records -or rule violators need to have their participation restricted (Accolo)
5. Global referral capability is now essential – as a result of social media, it is now easy for employees to make contacts everywhere, and since there is talent around the world, referral programs must now operate globally. In addition, remote work options now make it much easier for international talent to work anywhere. The very best programs allow for some level of regional customization (Accenture).

II. Increasing the Quality and Volume of Referrals

These advanced practices can make a significant impact on referral quality and volume.

1. Create a targeted pool of likely connected referrers — do not spam all employees with referral requests. Instead, develop a targeted pool of referrers (a referral database) that can be proactively searched in order to identify and approach the small number of individual employees who have a high likelihood of knowing individuals with the required skills and experience for a particular job. This group should include the externally “well-connected” and “super knowers” that know about the established relationships of your employees (Accolo).
2. Diversity must be emphasized – despite some frequent misconceptions, referral programs do not usually have a negative diversity impact. However if you desire to have an even higher percentage of diversity referrals, you need to focus your program and make it clear to your employees that diversity candidates are a high priority. Consider increasing the bonus for successful diversity hires (Sodexo).
3. Provide referral cards – providing your most visible employees with a paper or electronic referral cards can be powerful. The card should praise the type of person receiving the card and note that you have decided that they would be an exceptional fit at your firm. Electronic referral cards can include a tracking code to ensure that the employee gets credit for the referral. Encouraging your employees to wear “ask me about xyz” buttons (e.g. ask me about working at Cisco) at major industry events can also be effective in beginning relationships (Accenture & Southwest).
4. Proactively approach employees formerly employed at “target firms” — if your hiring managers are specifically seeking employees from desirable target firms, proactively approach your employees that used to work there.
5. Referral events – periodic open houses, ice cream socials, videoconferences, or lunchtime events can aid in highlighting your program and its current needs. Recruiters can be present to provide training, accept spot referrals, to do instant assessments, and even to offer rewards for exceptional names (Agilent, Monster, & Aricent).
6. Allow managers and HR to refer – because managers and HR individuals are also well-connected, it’s a mistake to prohibit them from making referrals. In cases where there is a perception of a conflict of interest, allow them to opt out of the bonus or to donate the bonus to charity (Accenture).
7. Expand eligibility to include non-employees – non-employees who know your firm well are often willing to provide referrals. Consider including corporate alumni, retirees, vendors, spouses, references, strategic partners, and even customers. Work with finance to find the easiest administrative ways to reward non-employees (Internosis).
8. Hold smart phone/social media/rolodex events – periodically hold short fun “contact gathering events” for small employee teams. During these events team members are encouraged to review their contacts and networks in order to identify potential referral prospects (Booz Allen Hamilton).
9. Search the “visible” competition — in industries where potential targets can be approached in person (i.e. the retail and hospitality industries), hold periodic internal competitions among your employees. Challenge them to visit competitor locations during a particular month and to interact with employees and managers in order to identify the very best working at competitor firms.

III. Features That Sell the Organization

You must provide your employees with “sales tools” to help them to convince prospects to become a referral.

1. Educate employees on how/where to find prospects — many employees simply don’t know where to look for prospects and how to convince them to accept becoming a referral. Educate your employees by providing them with a simple toolkit that directs them toward the best approaches and helps them to avoid learning by trial and error (Whirlpool, Aricent, & Acumen Solutions).
2. Provide a story inventory – the most powerful tool for selling referral prospects are authentic compelling stories about the firm. The first step is to develop an electronic story inventory so that employees can easily access your compelling stories. You should also develop a process that allows employees to contribute new stories by creating a spread-the-love website or wiki. The goal is to provide employees with access to an abundant number of stories, best practices, and examples for use in selling prospects. (Zappos & Microsoft)
3. Provide videos of the team – if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video can be priceless. Short informal videos can be a powerful supplement to stories. These videos can be put together by the hiring manager or employees and highlight key employees, the current work of the group, and the exciting aspects of the new opportunity. By providing this video, you increase the chances that the prospect will fully understand the opportunity and thus agree to become a referral (Deloitte & Microsoft).
4. Guarantee an interview to top prospects – by providing top performers and top referrers with the opportunity to guarantee an interview for anyone who they refer, you dramatically reduce their fear that their candidate won’t even qualify for an interview. Removing this fear of rejection by both the referring employee and the potential candidate you can dramatically increase the number and the quality of your referrals.
5. Develop a powerful slogan – although most referral programs have a slogan, very few of them are compelling, memorable, and drive action. The best program slogans are pretested to ensure that they provide the maximum impact. Examples include “A players know other A players,” “Help us catch a rising star,” “You recommend … we hire,” or “Help us build a great team… so we can all win.” (Microsoft – “Do you see yourself in others?”; “Google — Good people know other good people”).
6. Offer a friends program — employees in the same job family can be great salespeople. Solicit employees to become referral volunteers who agreed to briefly talk to “A level” referrals. This practice can decrease dropouts and increase offer acceptance rates (Cisco).
7. Improve your job descriptions – at some point in every referral relationship, the prospect will want to see the actual job description. Work with Compensation to ensure that the position descriptions are written in such a way that they actually excite potential referrals. Also compare your job descriptions for an open position to the competitors’ in order to ensure that yours are more compelling (Cisco).

IV. Reward and Bonus Related ERP Features

World-class programs never pay “equal” bonuses for all jobs, and some extremely effective programs offer no significant cash bonuses at all.

1. Do-it-for-the-team should be the primary motivator - instill in your employees that the primary reason that they should refer people is because the team wins “when it has the best players.” It is a superior motivator over monetary rewards, because it turns referrals into an opportunity to provide their teammates and themselves with the very best coworkers. By emphasizing the superior capability of employees to make contacts, to build relationships, and to assess potential candidates, you can educate your employees about the critical role that only they can play in filling the team with top performers and innovators (Accenture, Google, & Cisco).
2. Offer a charity donation option – some employees are concerned about the appearance of making referrals for self-enrichment. It is wise to offer the option of donating part ($175 – $900) or all of the reward to charity, as this can excite employees who are more concerned about helping others and being altruistic (DaVita & Accenture).
3. Offer prize drawings and non-cash rewards – a cheaper but almost-as-effective alternative to offering cash rewards for every referral is to hold a quarterly prize drawing where every employee who has made a successful referral during the period is eligible. Automobiles or car leases make great prizes because they get everyone’s attention. Unusual vacation trips are also powerful but if you have no money, consider making the prize a ticket to a once- or twice-a-year dinner with the CEO to celebrate all employees who made successful referrals. If you can’t afford or don’t want to offer large prizes or pay cash rewards, also consider providing a product sample, a handful of free movie tickets for the whole family, a plaque, or an award pin or T-shirt. Other no-cost prize options include a reserved parking spot, lunch with the CEO, or first-choice of vacation or shift schedules. Also consider placing their picture in the lobby or work with advertising to allow individuals who successfully refer an opportunity to appear in regular company product advertising (Tenet Health).
4. Settle for names only — often top employees do not have the time to thoroughly research and to capture a resume from a hot prospect. Consider offering a small reward (up to $100) for simply providing the names of obviously qualified candidates. In some cases, top employees are willing to provide names only without any bonus. In these cases, regular recruiters can pick up the follow-up and the prospect selling (Children’s Hospital & Google).
5. Periodically adjust your bonus amounts – consider varying the bonus based on the salary of the position. Offering the same rewards without variation almost always gets stale. Periodically experimenting with different approaches can allow organizations to accurately scale their incentives and to modify eligible position openings on a continuous basis. The best practice is to adjust your rewards periodically based on economic conditions, the current response rate and relative to what the competition is offering (CACI International)
6. Offer a “hard to hire” bonus supplement – for “hard-to-fill” key or hot jobs, offer a higher kick-up bonus or contest prize for a brief period of time. In some cases, hiring managers are willing to pay this bump up bonus (Aricent).
7. Gross up your bonuses – grossed up bonuses (where the tax on the reward is prepaid) can be stunning because they allow employees to receive and keep all of the reward (Agilent).
8. Supplement the bonus based on performance – offer supplemental award for referring those who after hiring turn out to be top performers (based on an above average performance appraisal score at the six-month assessment). Also consider increasing bonuses for longer-than-expected retention or if the hire happens to be a key employee from your competitor’s firm (Amazon).
9. Reward employees for referring top prospects who are not hired – offer a small reward to employees (up to $140) for all of their referral candidates who are good enough to be invited in for an interview. Also consider a small reward for employees who provide referrals who make it to the finalist list (even though they are not hired). This can further excite employees who “come close” but don’t actually have their candidate hired (Accenture).
10. A handwritten thank-you note — a personalized note or call from a senior executive thanking the employee who made a high-impact referral is cheap but powerful (Amazon).
11. Consider a “prize patrol” approach to celebrate referrals – consider making a public display and celebration out of awarding an individual referral prize both to excite and to increase competition (Quicken & Amazon).
12. Offer small rewards for “first-time” referrals – consider a small reward for employees who participate in the referral program for the first time. Potential small rewards might include a $25 gift or Starbucks card.
13. Offer small rewards to your applicants – consider small rewards or product samples for all referral interviewees who are not hired, to thank them for their time (FirstMerit).
14. Stunning bonuses can get everyone’s attention — in order to garner everyone’s attention, consider periodically offering an exceptional bonus amount ($20,000) for extremely hard-to-fill positions (DNAnexus).

Next week, Part II of “The Complete List of Employee Referral Program Best Practices.”

Cathy Henesey, manager, career services, Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, talks about the latter — paying for names not just hires — in the 9 1/2-minute video below. She discusses whether some jobs or all jobs are eligible; how to handle situations where multiple people give the same name; and the results of the program.

Time Your Recruiting to Occur When Competition Is Low

Recruiting is a lot like fishing. If you go out fishing on the first day of the season, there will be lots of fish available but there will also be a tremendous number of other fishermen trying to catch them. The ratio of fishermen to fish won’t be favorable and you will have to battle for good fishing spots. As a result, the odds of landing a trophy fish are small simply because of the intense competition at the start of the season. If you make the mistake of waiting even a month into the season, the odds of catching a trophy fish will drop to nearly zero. Imagine the results if you were granted permission to fish before the season began? If you came a week before the season started, you would be the lone fishermen among a large pool of available fish.

If you wait until the economic turnaround begins and everyone starts up recruiting again, the competition for talent will be intense, and the odds of landing a trophy candidate will be severely reduced. Fortunately, in recruiting, there are no laws limiting when you can recruit, so smart recruiting leaders will time their recruiting effort precisely prior the point before everyone else re-enters the recruiting game.

The Advantages of Pre-Boom Hiring

The broad concept of hiring when the competition is low is known as “countercyclical hiring” and is one of the 26 distinct recruiting strategies that recruiting leaders have available to them. Some of the advantages of this “acting immediately before” everyone else does include:

• Low competition — few firms are recruiting, so even if you have a weak employer brand or a bad location, you won’t have to fight for top talent
• High-quality talent is available — because of large-scale facility closings, mergers, and layoffs, there will still be a good number of high quality unemployed candidates available before the economic turnaround gets underway.
• Frustrated employees may jump quickly — because many employees have been frustrated with their current employer over the last two to four years, many employed individuals are likely to jump at the first available opportunity to leave their current firm. This pent-up frustration may cause them to accept even a less-than-perfect opportunity (surveys have shown that a majority of employees would consider another job).
• Talent costs are low — when the economic turnaround begins, competition and bidding for talent will cause salaries to begin rising, making the cost of hiring more expensive. But prior to the turnaround, talent will remain relatively cheap.
• Business leaders understand pre-turnaround strategies — executives in sales, marketing, and product development already know the value of pre-cycle strategies. As a result, it won’t take much convincing to show executives the potential ROI and the competitive advantage to be gained with a preemptive recruiting strategy.
• Hiring early allows time for training – hiring a month or two before your business actually needs the talent allows time for training and acclamation. As result, the new hires will be operating at full speed precisely at the time that the business needs them at full capacity.
• Prioritization can increase your impact – if you are faced with limited recruiting resources, your plan should prioritize recruiting so it focuses solely on high-impact jobs. In addition, identify the jobs that are likely to be the hardest to fill after the turnaround, so that you can also move them to the head of the recruiting queue.
• Weak recruiting might still yield results – because so few employers are in the marketplace, even a weakened recruiting team that may be using outdated tools may be able to produce significant results.  If you focus on boomeranging some of the top talent that you recently released you should be able to score some immediate results with little effort. In addition, harness your employees’ social media contacts and direct employees to convert them into candidates through your refurbished employee referral program.  Using these approaches, you should be able to make a killing.

Be Forewarned, the “War for Talent” Will Return

A key element in any pre-turnaround strategy is to correctly identify the precise time when recruiting competition will return. The competition for top talent will be extremely intense almost immediately after the turnaround begins. It would be naïve for anyone to assume that the “war for talent” will not return. Experts may disagree on when it will return, but mark my words, it will return. It has already returned in Silicon Valley and in parts of Asia and it never really subsided in healthcare. If you remember the last “war for talent,” the competition was so intense that it was hard for any firm to really “win,” even if it had the best strategies and tools. So the key is to make significant recruiting gains before it restarts.

Tips on Identifying When the Turnaround Will Begin

It’s hard to argue against the logic of this pre-turnaround strategy, so the key issue among doubters is correctly identifying when the turnaround will begin. Some of the things that you can do to identify an upcoming turnaround include:

• Focus on your industry — predicting the turnaround for an entire economy is certainly difficult, but fortunately, you only need to predict the turnaround of your industry, which is much easier.
• Use your strategic business planners — fortunately, within your firm there are already a large number of forecasters in business functions like sales, finance, marketing, and strategic planning working on predicting the turnaround. So instead of working alone, use their data and forecasts to identify the right time.
• Look for historical business patterns and “first-mover” firms — because every industry has gone through many business cycles in the past, there are patterns and precursors that if identified can give you a heads-up warning of an upcoming turnaround. For example, by examining past business turnarounds in your industry, you are likely to find that there are one or two “first-mover” firms that begin to grow before any others. Simply tracking their business expansion and investment, you can then predict when the remaining firms will see an upturn in revenues.
• Identify “first-mover” recruiting – in addition to looking at business expansion as an indicator of the turnaround beginning, you should also look for patterns that identify which firms in the past were the first to successfully begin large-scale recruiting in your industry. By identifying the order in which most firms reentered the recruiting marketplace, you can successfully predict when the competition for talent will again become intense.
• Internal alert factors – there are even some early warning signs within a firm that can give you a “heads up” about when your executives will likely authorize expanded recruiting. Typical internal precursors that can be identified prior to the ramping up of recruiting at a firm include: authorizing increased overtime, salary increases, and increased hiring of contingent workers. Incidentally, college hiring usually lags behind experienced hiring.
• Look at job postings – by tracking the volume of position postings on job boards and corporate websites, you can almost immediately see if any firm has made the decision to ramp up its hiring. Some jobs historically open up first (i.e. recruiting managers and recruiters must be hired months before a recruiting turnaround can begin), so tracking these “first-to-open-up” jobs can give you an early warning sign that recruiting is about to expand at a firm.
• Option B: develop the plan and then wait — even if you can’t accurately predict in advance when the recruiting turnaround will begin, another option is to have a plan in place so that you can react quickly when it does. Although you won’t be first, because your plan is already developed, you should be able to recruit fairly successfully if you enter the marketplace before the majority in your industry have time to develop and implement a brand new recruiting plan. A second option is to build a “talent pool” of viable candidates in advance and hold off actual hiring until you are sure the turnaround has begun.

Final Thoughts

Being strategic is a relatively simple concept. You need to plan ahead and implement a program that has a major impact on business results. Pre-turnaround hiring can produce those dramatic results because the lack of competition makes it relatively easy to target and land a handful of high-impact game-changers, top performers, and innovators.

If you haven’t already developed an “explode out-of-the-blocks” plan for implementing large-scale recruiting after the business turnaround begins, you are already behind. Supplement that large-scale plan with the pre-turnaround component that I have described in this article. This pre-turnaround approach allows you to take advantage of the lull just prior to the turnaround and to make your critical hires before the next “war for talent” begins.

12 Simple Actions Capable Of Improving Recruiting Results

Over the past decade I’ve engaged with several hundred organizations around the world. Based on my observations in dealing with each of them, the following 12 actions categorized by recruiting lifecycle stage are proven to produce results quickly.

Attracting Talent

1. Make your job postings exciting – many recruiters pull job descriptions from internal systems that were written long ago for purposes other than marketing an opportunity and are to put it simply, dull. Recruiters should rewrite them so that they sell the exciting aspects of the job and give applicants an idea of how they will be able to influence the future. At the very least, they should be tested against competitors’ descriptions to ensure they are more compelling.
2. Encourage referrals – it has been true for a number of years that the highest quality hires come from employee referrals, and the widespread growth of social media makes it even easier for employees to identify and build relationships with top talent. Unfortunately, employees are not trained recruiters, so if you want them to be effective at building/mining their networks, you will need to advise them of what practices work best. Also remember: nothing kills a referral program more than a slow response to referrals, so review and respond to each within 24-72 hours.
3. Revisit previous high quality candidates — often times you can save tremendous resources by simply revisiting the stars that got away. Reach out to candidates who voluntarily dropped out of the process, turned down an offer, or who were finalists in a field where a super candidate ended up getting the job. Times change, and it’s not uncommon for candidates to regret decisions. Also look at bringing back former star employees who have left your firm.
4. Ask references for referrals — in addition to harnessing the power of employee referrals, you should ask the references of top candidates and new hires to provide you with one or two additional names of top people who they know.
5. Target innovators — innovators may contribute more to profitability than top performers, so tout in advertisements that you’re looking for innovators and then revisit your screening approach to ensure that potential innovators are not screened out by overly rigid and antiquated competency profiles that do little more than maintain the status quo. Make sure ample time is allocated in the interview process to both sell your organization’s ability to innovate and probe the candidates’ ability to be innovative. Because innovators can be vocally intolerant of outdated practices, educate your hiring managers to expect a degree of different behavior from them during the interview.

Assessing Talent

1. Add real problems to interviews — although there is some value in talking about the past, interviews can be dramatically more valuable when they focus on real problems new hires will face if they join the organization. Don’t give them a puzzle or a theoretical situation. Give them a real difficult problem that only the best could solve. Remember, even if you don’t hire them, you can take advantage of the ideas candidates supplied (consider it free consulting).
2. Make interviews more feasible — people who are currently working have difficulty scheduling and attending multiple interviews, without placing their existing job in jeopardy. Make it more feasible by making changes to accommodate their schedule. Consider dedicating at least one night or weekend day a month to allow individuals with scheduling issues to interview outside of work hours or using video interviews that don’t require travel. Second, consider instituting a policy where all interviews are completed in a single day.

Engaging/Selling Talent

1. Ask candidates for their job acceptance criteria — selling top-quality candidates is always difficult, but you can make it much easier if you start out by asking candidates to identify the key factors they will consider when evaluating an offer. In addition, have them outline deal-breaking factors that would cause them to drop out of the process or not consider an offer. Tailor your assessment/selling approach around these factors.
2. Use mobile — effective communication is an important part of recruiting, so you want to identify and use the communication channels that are favored by top candidates. The very best these days rely heavily on smart mobile devices, so you need to learn how to effectively communicate on channels that are commonly used on such devices, including texting, micro-blogging, and social networking applications. Videos can be more powerful than words, so consider making and sharing a personalized video that actually shows the exciting aspects of your firm that can be viewed on a mobile device.
3. Help managers sell your firm — unfortunately, most managers do a poor job selling the company to potential recruits. Rather than trying to build up their sales skills, survey your key employees to identify the specific factors that make your firm superior to competitors and compile a list hiring managers can use to better position the opportunity.

Miscellaneous

1. Reduce spend on low-impact actions — although you may have a tradition of using newspaper ads, job fairs, and large job boards, they often produce only mediocre candidates and have a relatively high cost. More effective tools to consider as alternatives include referrals that you proactively seek out from your top performers, using LinkedIn, and recruiting at the monthly events of local professional organizations and clubs.
2. Target key individuals for retention — high turnover puts a strain on recruiting resources, so lighten your future load by proactively identifying a handful of high impact employees who might be at risk of leaving and who would be very difficult to replace. Work with their managers to identify the job elements and factors that excite them and keep them happy, as well as the factors that might cause them to consider leaving. Then work with their manager to ensure that they are continually provided with an ideal job, following a retention plan that is tailored to each individual.

Final Thoughts

If you frequently listen to consultants and vendors, you could get the impression that the only way to dramatically improve recruiting results is by spending millions of dollars on sophisticated solutions. While most high-dollar solutions are valid in some cases, they aren’t in all. Simple actions taken by individual recruiters and hiring managers can also produce dramatic almost immediate results, without requiring a stratospheric budget.

One of the most frequently discussed issues in the talent acquisition arena is the pursuit of the ever-elusive passive candidate. While many definitions exist about exactly what or who qualifies as passive, in this context it represents a talented individual capable of immediately adding value. Such an individual may or may not be evaluating new employment alternatives, yet they tend to be open to learning of possibilities worthy of their consideration.

With limited resources and an interest in finding the right cultural and skill fit, employers often rely on employee referral programs to incentivize current workers to help them acquire new talent. Not only can this be part of a cost- effective recruitment strategy, it tends to produce leads to others in the industry resembling existing, successful employees. If managed well, referral programs can create win-win arrangements and build an endless pipeline of talent.

Cliché or not, countless organizations tout some version of a message claiming their employees are their most valuable asset. Thus it is logical for that sentiment to appear prominently on corporate career web pages where applicants are directed to view and apply for employment opportunities.

Even if there is no monetary reward or formal program for referrals, many of these valued human assets discuss their work in social settings which opens up opportunities for professional networking contacts to become interested in that business and corresponding career options. In those cases, the company benefits from a semi-known commodity while the referring employee takes pride in potentially helping someone land a desirable job.

When a person actively looking for employment or someone just curious about making a change reaches out to one of their contacts at a company, it usually means they are hopeful about circumventing the DMV-esque experience involved with applying through a standard ATS. Keeping that in mind, one might expect employers to be falling all over themselves to provide some type of accelerated process to put preferred or referred candidates on a fast track to decision-makers.

Absent a short-cut, when the referring employee has the misfortune of passing their referral to a less-savvy recipient, they encounter a dead end in the form of “tell ‘em to apply online.” That instruction is the equivalent telling someone craving fettuccine alfredo right now, that there is a 45-minute wait at Olive Garden. While it still sounds tasty, they may decide that a mass-produced chain restaurant meal is not necessarily worth the hassle of sitting around until the flashing, vibrating, take-a-number disk gets activated.

Whether too hungry to wait for food or not interested enough to jump through random job-seeker hoops, when faced with inconveniences or delays, most people instinctively search for more accommodating choices.

An employee who refers a friend that gets instantly rejected or redirected is less likely to try again. Both the employee and their referral will probably question how valued they really are or how serious that employer is about attracting and retaining top talent.

A better approach would be to minimize steps needed for someone inside to initiate contact with the referred candidate. From there a designated person should establish whether a preliminary match for a current or future need might exist.

At that point, the referral could be invited to officially apply online if they so choose. Or, at a minimum they would go on their way feeling pleased that they were treated to a courtesy screening conversation. The referring employee would receive confirmation that their employer appreciates them enough to follow through with them and their contact.

In a survey conducted in collaboration with LinkedIn in late 2010, we discovered that 22 percent of the fully-employed workforce was absolutely not looking. Another 44 percent were open to considering something if contacted by a recruiter. Sixteen percent were discreetly looking, networking only with former associates. Only eight percent were actively looking, with the remaining 10 percent casually looking using search engines and job aggregators a few times a week, at most.

Surprisingly, most companies, even those using social media and Web 2.0 techniques, are only reaching the 16 percent who are considered active. This leaves 82 percent relatively untouched. This will have to change if companies want to maintain their competitive edge in a growing economy.

Over the course of the past 10 years I’ve identified eight core strategies for hiring top talent.

Some of these will help companies make this shift towards passive candidate recruiting. In some cases they represent all you’ll need to do. Regardless, understanding your company’s underlying recruiting and hiring strategy, whether by default or choice, will determine its fate in the upcoming quest for the best talent.

The Eight Core Strategies for Winning the Recruiting Game

1) Have a big brass brand. AKA: attract more top people than you need, so if you make a mistake it won’t matter. This actually works very well, until the brass stops shining, or you lose your market dominance. Consider Google as an example of a slightly tarnished brand. Now it needs to recruit top people, not just screen them.

2) Be first. Early adopters have an edge since there are always countless good sourcing ideas being developed. Each new technology, however, has a limited life span and it becomes less effective as everyone starts using it and diminishing returns set in. That’s why new techniques constantly need to be developed. The development cycles for these new sourcing techniques are getting shorter, so it’s hard to be first all of the time for everything.

3) Be best. Optimize whatever you do, and be better than everyone else. As long as you do whatever you do better than the competition, you’ll stay ahead of the pack, even using older technologies. For example, compelling ads on the big and niche boards are still effective if everyone else’s are boring. The key is you must make the optimization a process, not a project, which, by itself, is part of a good long-term recruiting strategy.

4) Hire the best recruiters you can, or give good recruiters great training and great processes to work with. I tend not to consider the Lone Ranger model of letting a bunch of alpha-recruiters loose on your hiring managers a good tactic or strategy. Not only is it pretty inefficient, since they’re hard to corral, but you don’t have much of a perpetual legacy when they leave. You also get the frequently asked question from hiring managers, “Why does every recruiter have a different approach? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have all of our recruiters use a common set of best practices?” This suggests that good recruiters can become great if they have a reasonable workload combined with great tools and are using a common set of best practices.

5) Use compelling targeted advertising. Whether you’re focusing on active or passive candidates, the ability to stand out with creative messages (postings, emails, Tweets, voice mails) is the key to attracting the best talent. Going viral is a critical aspect of this, meaning have your jobs forwarded to friends and connections by whomever saw it first. Here’s my favorite job posting of the month. It’s a blog posting from a Director of Engineering at Netflix. Two key trends are demonstrated with this. First, the hiring manager is personally involved. Two, it’s how a talent community should operate. (I’m holding a webcast on this subject on April 19th hosted by ZoomInfo, so don’t miss if it’s not too late.)

6) Be proactive. Planning puts you at the front of the pack, and even if you’re not the best, you’ll still win the race because you started before everyone else. Knowing who you’ll be hiring in the next few quarters gives you more options. This approach will hide inefficiencies, but if it results in great candidates, it doesn’t matter.

7) Implement PERP and ICRM. These two concepts represent the next phase of social media and advanced networking. PERP is the idea of expanding a company’s employee referral program by having employees proactively connect with the best of their former associates. When a new opportunity arises, these new connections can then be instantly contacted. LinkedIn leads the pack on this critical front developing new tools to automatically advise employees which of their first degree connections best fit open opportunities. ICRM refers to interactively nurturing talent pipelines using a decision-tree approach for sending semi-custom emails. In this case, different emails are sent out depending on how candidates respond to earlier emails.

The eighth strategy is a combination of all of the above to some degree, without the need to be the best, the most perfect, or the most proactive, just the most complete.

8) Be scalable. Use best practices for each of the sourcing and recruiting steps not above, as well as you possibly can on a consistent basis. In the long run this is the best approach to building a top talent acquisition process, since good people using best practices get consistently better results than having a few overworked stars on the team. The key to success: it needs to be driven top-down, the recruiting function needs to be provided with ample resources, and hiring managers need to be fully engaged.

If you’re going to rely on active candidate sourcing, you’d better be great at it. If you’re still using traditional job descriptions as part of your advertising, you’ll never be able to attract top people who have multiple opportunities. So banish these today if you want to hire anyone but the desperate. Once you start using career-oriented advertising, then being first, best, and proactive will help you compete.

If you’re intending to shift to a passive-candidate-centric recruiting model, you’ll need to ensure your recruiters fully understand real job needs and have no qualms about calling passive candidates and convincing them to consider your open positions. As part of these they need to be able to establish instant credibility, be persistent, and quickly turn your job into a career opportunity worth exploring. We’ve prepared a Recruiter Circle of Excellence competency model defining the core skills required to compete in this type of talent market. Here’s a link to a handout from a webcast we recently held with BountyJobs on this topic. This will get you started in making the shift from active candidate sourcing to passive candidate recruiting.

As the battle for hiring supremacy accelerates, a shift in hiring and recruiting strategy is essential. Part of this is realigning resources toward a more passive candidate recruiting approach and upgrading the skills of the recruiters involved. Even being the best at active candidate sourcing is not good enough. For one thing, finding the best of the 18 percent is not the same as hiring them. Worse, it still leaves 82 percent of the market untouched. Recruiting and hiring the best of this group requires great recruiters using sophisticated solution-selling techniques and fully-engaged hiring managers. We’re holding a series of webcasts this month highlighting what it takes to make this shift, but it all starts with a new strategy.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

The inventory of available approaches is quite large, with many solutions existing under the radar.

The following list highlights the very best unknown and underutilized tools, some of which I have highlighted previously.

40+ “Unknown” Or Barely Known Recruiting Tools

I) Infrequently Used Sourcing and Candidate Identification Tools

The most commonly used tools include employee referrals, employment advertising, direct sourcing, agencies, and events, but there are many others to consider, including:

• Proactive referrals — rather than waiting for key individuals to refer, go directly to your top performers and ask them for targeted referrals (target five a month). Ask them specifically to refer their mentees, best retirees they know, and former colleagues. (Google)
• Reference referrals — on the anniversary date of new hires who turn out to be exceptional employees, call the references back, thank them, and ask “Who else do you know who is equally as good?”
• Educational seminars on site — for larger firms, sponsor an educational seminar covering the field that you are recruiting for and hold it onsite. Offer attendees a tour and provide a mechanism for them to mingle with your current staff. This is an effective tool when the name of your firm isn’t that great, but your people, approaches, and facilities really are! (Microsoft)
• Online contests — competitions are a great way to identify top performers and innovators. A compelling online contest covering a real problem can attract and allow you to effectively assess the very best from around the world. (Google)
• Certification courses — for jobs that require professional certifications, ask attendees from your organization to look for top talent during certification courses. If you’re really serious, consider having your top people teach them.
• Almost qualified — keep a tickler file of exceptional finalists who just needed a bit more experience; re-contact them 1-3 years later.
• Turned us down — keep a tickler file of finalists who have turned down offers; monitor their situation and re-contact them when things change.
• Interview referrals — challenge the industry knowledge of your best interviewees by asking them as part of the interview to list the names of other outstanding individuals they know. If you ask enough interviewees, you will get a pretty good list of top names in the function and industry.
• New hire referrals — ask all new hires on their first day, “Who else is good at your previous firm or in the industry?” Ask them to help you recruit any targeted individuals who they know.
• Referral cards — provide your highly visible employees with referral cards that sell your firm and that let the individual know that they are special. They can be similar to business cards or electronic. (Yahoo)
• “Ask me” buttons — offer employees “Ask me about what it’s like working at XYZ” lapel buttons to wear at industry events. Train your employees on how to respond, and encourage them to refer only the best that approach them.
• Target retirees — many retirees have second thoughts after they leave work. Consider them for permanent or “fill-in” roles. (Microsoft)
• Talent communities — develop online talent communities where you build relationships over time with a group of prospects based on learning and professional issues. Only after the professional relationship is solidified do you pursue recruiting possibilities. (Microsoft)
• Find-you-again profile — in order to identify the best sources, ask your current top employees “how would I find you again?” Ask them what industry and social events they attend, magazines and journals that they read, and what social media and Internet sites they frequent. Use this information to identify the sources where corporate branding or job announcements are the most likely to be seen and read.
• When a competitor is in trouble — when a competing firm is undergoing cutbacks, staff reductions, or other turmoil, increase your recruiting efforts to target their best people. Individuals who said no in the past may have a change of heart almost overnight.
• Search collaboration sites — sometimes the best way to identify top talent is a review of their work that is available online. Visit collaboration sites like SlideShare and technical forums to identify individuals with the best ideas and approaches.
• Hiring freeze recruiting — when you are facing a talent competitor that you can never beat in head-to-head competition, target your recruiting to begin whenever the firm has instituted a hiring freeze or slow down. Off-cycle recruiting during an economic downturn or a period of layoffs is also almost always a good strategy for weaker or lesser-known firms.
• Narrowcasting for skills — identify the organizations, websites, and social media channels where individuals with the desired skill “hang out.” For example if the skill you need is risk taking, the sourcing should focus on clubs, organizations, and social network sites that are populated by risk-takers (i.e. rock climbing or investment clubs).
• Proximity location tools — there are many new social network tools (for example foursquare) that use smartphone technologies to allow you identify whenever any of your social network friends or prospects are physically located close to you. This is especially useful when a face-to-face meeting is required to sell a prospect.
• Names research — outsource your name generation efforts to specialty firms, if finding names is your only recruiting weakness.

II) Little-known Convincing, Selling, and Candidate-Closing Tools

After identifying your recruiting targets, you need effective tools for convincing them to apply, to remain through the last interview and to accept your offer.

• Assigned referrals based on social network relationships — when a top candidate has already been identified, the recruiter uses software to identify which employee has the strongest social media relationship with the target. The employee (or employees) is then given the assignment of using their connections to contact and to build a recruiting relationship with the target. (Zynga)
• Using CRM tools — it turns out that CRM software that is used by the customer service function at your firm can be easily adapted to recruiting. CRM practices have proven to be effective in building relationships and in improving the candidate experience.
• Use the mobile platform — the smart phone is the most powerful communications medium, simply because prospects are constantly on it and carry it with them at all times. Make sure that your corporate website is compatible with smart phones, and use text, voice, and videos to communicate your message. (AT&T)
• “Why did you say yes?” — you can dramatically improve your recruiting sales pitch, if you ask all new hires “which specific element of our recruiting and branding pitch” had a positive influence on their decision to apply and accept. Use this information to improve your marketing materials, interviews, and the offer process.
• Job descriptions — if you have a hard time getting individuals to apply, a dull job description is a common reason. Rewrite your job descriptions to make them more like marketing pieces. (Sodexo)
• Side-by-side sell sheets — provide your hiring managers with a single sheet that shows how your firm and its offer may be superior to likely offers from competing firms. This practice can help managers with weak selling skills.
• Live Internet video interviews — it is quite difficult for currently employed or remotely located individuals to find the time to attend an in-person interview. An effective alternative that is much easier to schedule is using live Internet video interviews for at least the first round. Skype, new technologies, and vendors make it cost-effective. (Zappos)
• Film festival — if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video must worth a million. Encourage employees and teams to make short videos revealing “the excitement” within your firm. (Deloitte)
• CEO calls — if you want to close hard-to-hire top candidates, have your CEO or local facility head call the candidate directly and encourage them to sign on. Knowing that they have the CEO’s support is a powerful selling point if they effectively prepare for the conversation.
• A story inventory — many great firms have difficulty selling candidates because they cannot communicate the employee experience are employees and managers struggle to convert potential referrals because they are not completely aware of best practices and powerful stories that make the firm a top place to work. Develop a story identification process and create a story inventory or Wiki to catalog your top success stories/examples. (Zappos)
• Peer interviews — if your managers are having difficulty selling top candidates, you get a significantly higher acceptance rate if candidates are interviewed primarily by the individuals they will work directly with. Because peers know the job, they can be more convincing and at the same time, more believable than hiring managers.
• Ask for their “job-switch criteria” — candidates who are in high demand must have their specific expectations met or they will accept other offers. If you ask candidate up front to identify their job-switch criteria (and any “deal breakers”) you can tailor the recruiting process, so that you end up providing information showing that you meet each of their criteria.
• Contact them on the “right day” — individuals who say no initially may change their mind after they experience a negative “triggering” event such as the firing of a boss/friend, a merger announcement, or project proposal rejection.
• Use a hiring team — sometimes when you are attempting to recruit top candidates, you find out that the hiring manager is not a great recruiter, interviewer, or deal closer. As an alternative, consider selecting a hiring team made up of exciting and interesting personalities to do your recruiting and selling (include both managers and employees).
• Exploding offers — when competition for talent is intense, you need candidates to accept your offer quickly, before a better one comes along. Fast offer acceptances also restrict the ability of their current manager to make a successful counter offer. One of the best tools for getting fast acceptance is an “exploding offer,” i.e. an offer with a significant bonus for immediate acceptance.
• Green and sustainable recruiting — because sustainability is such a hot topic among candidates, it pays to emphasize environmentally friendly actions, programs, and products both on your website and during interviews. (GE)

III) Under-the-Radar College Recruiting Tools

College recruiting is the most traditional among all types of corporate recruiting, so don’t be surprised if your college or routing group hasn’t tried any of these tools.

• College referrals — it turns out that the most effective process for recruiting experienced hires works even better for attracting college students, who are even more well-connected.
• Remote college recruiting — you can’t visit every college campus but it is now possible to identify and assess the very best college students remotely, using Internet and social media tools.
• Interns as on campus reps — ask your college interns to serve as recruiting representatives or ambassadors when they return to campus. Ask them to visit the events held by professional clubs and to provide you with the names of the best to target.
• Grad assistants — the grad or teaching assistants of top professors not only know the best students but they are very good at convincing them to accept your new opportunities. Officers of professional student organizations are also excellent talent scouts.
• Two-years-out recruiting — there is a lot of competition for top students graduating right out of school. Save your resources and go after them after they have been out for two years. During those two years another company will have invested in training them; their expectations and their preferences will have likely changed, making them easier to sell.

Final Thoughts

Because many recruiters and their managers are overworked, it’s hard for them to keep up on trends and tools. Since there is no national database of recruiting tools, it’s not surprising that so many effective tools remain under the radar. I hope this list gives you some ideas and that you try at least one.

And finally, and least surprising of all, referrals continue to be the leading source of external hires.

These are among the highlights of the 10th annual Source of Hire study by CareerXroads. Released today, the study reports the results of a survey of 36 large, “well-branded” but anonymous U.S. companies who cumulatively employ 1.32 million workers and hired not quite 133,000 employees in 2010.

This is the 10th year that Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler have conducted the survey to see where companies source their hires. As has been the case from the beginning in 2001, referrals from employees, vendors, alumni, customers, and other sources was the leading source of external hires. Last year, the surveyed companies reported 27.5 percent of their external hires came from referrals. The percentage has fluctuated only modestly over the years.

What is somewhat surprising about the referrals is that 51.7 percent of the responding companies said that up to 20 percent of their referral hires come from sources other than employees. On the other hand, 45 percent of the respondents said ALL their referral hires were recommended by employees.

Click to Expand

As strong as that number continues to be, job boards in 2010 took a big leap into second place, with almost a quarter of all external hires being sourced there.Last year, 13.2 percent of external hires came from job boards, a percentage more in line with the historic data.

Monster and CareerBuilder were the leading suppliers of hires, with 88.9 percent of the responding companies reporting they made at least one hire from Monster alone. (The similar stat for CareerBuilder was 85.7 percent.)

In past years, corporate career sites occupied second place, as a source of external hires. However, Crispin and Mehler have regularly observed that candidates come to corporate sites often by clicking on job postings on job boards or search engines.

The current report makes the same point. “Career sites are critical but they are more likely to be the end point, not the beginning or middle,” write Crispin and Mehler. There’s a diagram in the report from Jobs2Web, which, they note, “helps to illustrate that the 18.8% hires attributed to company career sites very likely came from somewhere else.”

Getting a handle on the originating referral source is still a challenge for most companies in the survey. Two-thirds of them simply don’t track their search engine marketing or optimization efforts.

The picture is much the same when it comes to their social media efforts. Most companies are able to identify candidates sourced through LinkedIn, but half can’t when it comes to other social media sources, particularly Facebook and Twitter.

Nonetheless, 57.1 percent of the respondents reported that social media played an important part in their direct sourcing program. That was the percentage reporting they researched candidates on social networks. Asked to rank the impact of social media on various parts of their recruiting program, respondents said its influence was greatest on direct sourcing, college hiring, and on hiring from job boards.

The report contains dozens of other data points, including contingent worker hiring, RPO use, and talent community management. Even with the small number of companies reporting, the report is now a classic, identifying trends and offering pints of comparison for recruiters everywhere.

As Crispin and Mehler note, “The set of conclusions from our February, 2010 9th Annual SOH Report is still valid. The 2010 data presented here merely underlines the need to continue improving how we measure the interaction of multiple sources i.e. the channels of influence that result in a hire.”

One judge (Rob Dromgoole) wrote on Facebook:

Finished voting for Recruiting Department of 2010 and Military Recruiting Program of Year 2010 for ERE. Lots of great applications. I’m humbled by how great some programs are.

And another (Gerry Crispin) emailed to say about the “military talent” category:

EVERY ONE of the Public and Private Companies and Agency firms who submitted to this category are winners. They are ALL engaged in ensuring that an underutilized but highly prized segment of our population is getting up to bat for jobs and competing for openings.

The judges took this project seriously, some showing me the spreadsheets and algorithms they created to keep track of their entries and sending me feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

As always, you’ll hear a lot more about the finalists throughout the year. At the Spring conference in San Diego, the winners will be announced, and you’ll be able to ask them how they did it, how they overcame challenges, and so on. We’ll also talk about them more on this site, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on the ERE.net site, and we’ll ask some to speak at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (September 7-9, 2011).

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order within each category:

Best College Recruiting Program

Deloitte: Among its many efforts: enhanced faculty relationships. More than 1,500 faculty use its accounting and auditing case materials in their teaching. A great quote from a Deloitte employee sums up a lot of what Deloitte’s done:

As a recently hired Business Analyst at Deloitte Consulting, I can say with conviction that I am with the organization because of a three-year relationship I built with Deloitte prior to being hired on full-time.

Ernst & Young: EY is no stranger to these ERE Recruiting Excellence awards. The company, in its own words, “honored every single job offer we’ve made to campus recruits” despite the recession. Its “Your World Your Vision” program invited teams of students to propose how they could make a difference locally; winners were awarded $10,000 to implement the ideas. Ernst & Young Careers on Facebook has 58,781 “likes.” Its Flexspace virtual reality tool allows students to explore real-life ways that work and personal commitments can work together. An International Intern Leadership Conference it held drew 1,339 students from more than 13 countries. EY’s now offering overseas assignments for some interns over the summer. It has more than a 90% conversion rate of interns to full-time hires for the past four years.

Best Corporate Careers Website

AT&T: Some highlights cited by judges: strong use of social media; strong use of color; engaging message to candidates; job search broken down by job seekers, returning seekers, and current employees.

Nestle Purina: After a March 2010 relaunch (featuring real people and real animals), site traffic rose sharply and “stickiness” increased 95%.

Best Employee Referral Program

Accenture: A finalist last year, Accenture’s program in the past was significantly different from country to country and was run decentralized. It implemented one globally consistent referral submission process; a system was developed internally that has a two-way interface with Accenture’s talent acquisition system; and it implemented one globally consistent employee referral communication campaign with one centralized global team running the program (day to day & strategy).

Aricent: It has won before, and shared a few of its secrets before, too. Its “offer to joinee” ratio is higher for referrals vs. overall. The same goes for its “selection conversion ratio” (how many people are selected out of total interviews). Its cost per hire is much lower. It has also measured quality of hire for referrals, finding that it’s higher than other hiring channels. Referred employees stay longer.

Best Employer Brand

Adidas Group: Surveys of employees and job seekers helped Adidas better understand how people perceive the company. Then it brought marketing, communications, and HR together to finalize its positioning, and its advertising execs were brought in to refine the brand (which is all about employees’ ability to shape sports and through their work, their ability to help customers achieve their sports dreams, and the connection to pro athletes). Adidas Group built a “brand bible” to educate people about the brand, and an employer branding toolkit to use in recruitment advertising.

Sodexo: It involved all levels of the company — from executive team members to interns — as brand ambassadors, communicating the brand on college campuses, professional association meetings, and through social media. Far more people are searching for Sodexo now on CareerBuilder and going to Sodexo’s career site. It has reduced paid advertising costs, such as job board spending. Last year, the company won the “department of the year” award.

Best Retention Program/Practices

Cisco: It created a new retention program to actively recruit its own employees for new positions.

PNC: The company reduced layoffs through a sort of in-house temp firm it created. An employee could take on a temp assignment within the company, perhaps in another division, possibly resulting in a permanent gig. The company saved on recruiting costs, severance costs, and saved some of its employees’ jobs. Melissa Mounce, the bank’s SVP of corporate talent acquisition, is on the agenda this coming March 25 in San Diego.

Best Military Talent Program

CACI: A contractor for the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, CACI has an internship initiative providing on-the-job experience and training for disabled veterans interested in learning new career skills; collaborates with many veterans’ organizations to provide resume writing, interview training, and mock job fairs; and partners helps teach career skills at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center. CACI has 522 disabled veterans in its workforce.

June 24, 2008, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Naval Sea Systems Command: With the unemployment rate among disabled veterans at 18%, NAVSEA has tried to address the problem with mentoring, training, and more for the wounded. In 2010, NAVSEA placed 282 disabled veterans into civilian careers and set a goal of hiring one “Wounded Warrior” per day in 2011. It has an over 90% retention rate among disabled veterans at NAVSEA, saving unemployment costs.

Most Strategic Use of Technology

Informatica: Informatica’s talent acquisition strategy emphasizes competitive intelligence mapping and how it can translate findings into actionable sourcing channels. The outcome is a solution to a common industry ailment, a way to retain the intellectual property of the organization’s recruiters, regardless of staff reorganization.

PNC: It did a lot tech-wise, from audio screening 400,000 applications in a year to centralizing its sourcing activity with SourcePoint CRM, which it uses to locate potential candidates and have the empirical data needed when talking with business managers, such as how hard a search is gong to be. Its landing pages have a “stay connected” option at the bottom to feed data into its CRM. For some jobs, it’s moving away from job boards and more toward search engine optimization and landing pages. PNC also implemented an online recruiter toolkit to standardize its processes, and is working on a hiring manager kit.

Recruiting Department/Function of the Year

CACI: It was a finalist last year, too. You read above about its military recruiting. It uses a candidate-centric recruiting team to proactively source a pipeline of candidates in major skill set areas. Recruiters tap into a pool of thousands of candidates as business needs necessitate. The referral program provides the No. 1 source of candidates, and an alumni program provides regular communication to former CACI employees to encourage them to return to CACI. CACI has also worked to facilitate the internal movement of employees to reduce hiring costs while increasing retention. The company had record 15% revenue growth in FY10.

Fluor: One of those companies and one of those award applications where you see how critical talent management is. Recruiters and human resources employees helped establish a candidate pool to support the BP oil spill clean-up effort, and helped recruit and train candidates onsite in several Eastern European countries for mobilization to a job site in Afghanistan without the cost and time involved in first sending them to the U.S. for training.

Naval ship arrives home after a medical care mission to Haiti

U.S. Navy: The Navy delivered one of its best recruiting years despite a shrinking military-eligible population, decreased propensity to serve, and significant budgetary challenges. It developed and launched a new brand. It used a cross-functional supply chain management working group comprised of recruiting, training, and fleet stakeholders to foster early communication of manpower needs, training availability, and resource constraints. And, it dramatically increased diversity market penetration though minority affinity group partnerships, focused diversity marketing and advertising, and strategic placement of diverse employees — recruiting the most diverse new employee population in the Navy’s history. All in all, it recruited the highest quality new employees in Navy’s history.