5 Top Misconceptions About Employee Referrals

By Author: Savio Vadakkan
Total Articles: 58
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Though employee referral programs have now been institutionalized in most organizations, they are still far from delivering to their full potential. Organizations with successful employee referral programs are those that have taken the trouble of going beyond popular misconceptions to deliver a program that is sustainable and in line with employee expectations. Here are the top 5 misconceptions associated with an Employee Referral Program:

1) You just need a basic Job Description to run an employee referral program as they are not really important in the entire scheme of things. - By not taking the trouble to design a job description that encapsulates all the basic elements of the job, organizations lose a golden opportunity of effectively using employee knowledge of the organization to do a correct match of the job with the candidate. This results in a lot of wastage of time and effort of the hiring manager as he then needs to filter out inappropriate or irrelevant candidates, a task which could easily have been performed by the employee had the job description been more comprehensive and clearer.

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... A good job description should contain at least the following elements in detail:

• Reporting relationships as the roles that will report to the particular position. In addition the JD should also cover prominent teams or coworkers that the position will need to collaborate with on a regular basis.

• Job responsibilities including both Key result areas and criteria for judging the same

• Role expectations both immediate and long term as well as any extra initiatives expected from the position.

• Qualifications, experience and skill sets required as well as the key competencies the position holder is expected to possess

• Compensation details including benefits provided by the company over and above the salary

2) Cash rewards are the only motivators for employees to refer people-A motivated employee will refer others to join the organization irrespective of a cash reward.

3) Referring a candidate is a difficult and time consuming process -Organizations needs to design a program that simplifies the entire process of referring an employee and ensure that employees are informed of the ease of referring. There are many employee referral tools like ZALP which automate the entire referral process and make it simple.

4) There is no need of regular communication of the employee referral program once it is launched. In fact an employee referral program needs to be communicated through various mediums on a regular basis to ensure top of the mind awareness with employees

5) Lastly, Employee referral programs can run independently - On the contrary, if an employee referral program is not well aligned with organizational objectives and championed by the leaders in the organization, employees are not likely to take it seriously and the program is likely to fail.

An employee referral program that takes care of these misconceptions and strives to continuously reinvent itself to meet employee expectations is already halfway towards being successful. Your employees are highly likely to refer well and in plenty to ensure you move way past your recruiting goal line.

You can read more on latest trends and technologies in recruitment on zalp.com/theemployeereferralblog/

Author Bio:

Savio Vadakkan is the Marketing Professional at ZALP, a unique employee referrals booster. ZALP helps organizations tap the full potential of their Employee Referral programs using advanced Employee Referrals, referring an employee and interesting features like gamification.