Employee Referrals: Non-Money Rewards for Good Behavior

Recruiting Nirvana exists when everyone in your company - from admins to software engineers to VPs - acts like a recruiter. Generating referrals is one of the best ways non-recruiters help to recruit. Now, most of you probably have some sort of referral bonus. Good. But there's also some no-cost actions we can take to keep the referral pipeline flowing.

We need to take the lead to publicly recognize employees who make quality referrals that get hired. Find ways to reinforce employees who make time to help build the company.

1. Ideally, get each of your VPs a list of all of the referrals made each month by their employees, and shadow-write a “thank you” note that he or she can send out to the employee and the employee’s direct manager.
   
2. Or, when it’s performance review time, send a note to top-referring employees and their managers, recognizing the extra effort they put in over the past year to help recruit great people. Guess where these attaboys end up? Yep, right in the performance reviews.
   
3. Try establishing goals and publishing stats for referrals by departments, or even consider setting up a competition within or between departments, to raise the visibility of quality referrers and tap into people's natural competitive spirit.
   
4. When new employee announcements are sent out, be sure to note the source of hire if it's a referral. Remind people that good people don't grow on trees. Every one of us could - and should - be out there generating quality team members.
   

They key is to reward good behavior, publicly. Send a message that people who make time to refer quality employees are not only making money, but they’re doing their jobs and spending their time wisely.

What do you do to reinforce good referrers?