Referral Bonuses - I saw something new today...

When I was a Corporate Recruiting Leader, we'd make changes to our employee referral bonus payouts to see where the law of diminishing returns kicked in (if we double it to $4,000, will we get twice the hires?). We also recognized that we wanted to set reward levels differently based on position, but it was a hassle to administer and track, so we generally set bonus levels for big groupings, like hourly and salaried.

This week I'm reviewing ATS's for a 350+ store retailer/client, and - today - I received a demo of HR Smart.

They offered something I've never seen, but often wanted.

• In their system, you can set different employee referral bonuses based on the req. So your easy-to-fill marketing job may have a small or no referral bonus, while your tech job may have a $1,000 bonus and your tech manager job may have a $4,000 bonus.
• The referral bonus amount for a job is shown to the employee at the time they review open jobs on your internal careers site. No need to refer to a separate ER policy/program page matrix to figure out what each job pays.
  
• You can set it up so that the bonus pays out in phases - maybe $500 if their referral makes it to an interview, $500 if hired, and another $500 on their 30 day anniversary.
• And, you can even set up referral bonuses for non-employees. So that anyone who reviews your careers site can see the $1,000 (or whatever) bonus you're offering for a job.

Granted, I got a 75 min demo, and didn't see how all of the back-end processing works (or doesn't work). But I love the fact that a systems company is looking for ways to help us maximize our #1 source of external hires.

p.s. Again, I get no commissions or kickbacks from this or any ATS vendor.