Your Employee Referral Strategy 2014

By Author: Savio Vadakkan
Total Articles: 58
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Employee referral programs so far have largely focused on ways for organizations to tap their employee network to hire good quality candidates who will fit in with the organizational culture.

The new age employee referral programs, which are likely to have resonance in 2014, include a whole lot of forward-looking components. For one, companies with a proactive approach to hiring have started using the referral program to include external partners. This includes alumni network vendors, business partners and peers etc. who are treated as potential allies in sourcing high quality candidates.

Another trend which is catching on in a big way and likely to gain increasing popularity in 2014 is the use of mobile technology to make the employee referral program easily accessible for employees and partners operating out of remote locations. A mobile portal especially created for remotely located employees and partners which can be accessed on the go through tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices enable an organization to tap into a geographically dispersed pool of employees and partners.

A convenience that ...
... is becoming more of a necessity for ensuring the success of the employee referral program is the use of technology to automate the entire referral process. An automated employee referral process takes care of a number of elements including sending out communication regarding all current job openings, advising employees on the process of submitting referrals, compiling applications received as well as tracking the status of the applications. One such tool which automates and streamlines the entire employee referral process is ZALP. Newer technology also makes it possible to send out personalized message to the relevant people to ensure the right set of people are referring candidates for a particular opening.

Gamification is another major trend likely to come up in a big way in 2014. A fun way to keep employees engaged and active in the recruitment process is to introduce friendly competitions like a point based reward system or a leader board. This creates a sense of friendly rivalry and allows them to compare their performance in the referral program against other employees.

However the one constant factor for the success of any employee referral remains creating a clear and compelling job description that acts both as a tool to market your company and the job as well as enables employees to match candidate skill sets against the skill sets mentioned in the job description.

A well constructed job description acts as a great filter mechanism which can be quickly performed by employees themselves to weed out undesirable candidates saving precious time and effort both of the candidates and the hiring team. A badly written job description on the other hand has the opposite effect of flooding the system with undesired applicants resulting in a lot of wastage of time and effort of everyone involved in the process.

So go ahead, make the most of 2014 with a forward -looking employee referral strategy to add the most important resource to your organization- quality talent.

You can read more on latest trends and technologies in recruitment on www.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 referral process and interesting features like gamification.