Find new colleagues through your professionals

Recruiting skilled people has become increasingly important recently. Many service providers are now asking themselves: how do we find good people? This article explores finding new people through existing ones. This is called "word-of-mouth recruitment."

It's certainly a great experience when your employees help you connect with new people through their informal networks. When we ask our clients why they're interested in this, we get answers like: 

  • You have too few people and traditional recruitment does not work well enough;
  • High(er) quality candidates;
  • Works quickly and cheaply;
  • Own employees also become more proud of the organization;
  • We just can't make it with traditional recruiters right now.
At the same time, we often hear managers say:
  • Recruitment through my professionals is not getting off the ground
  • I tell it so many times, but nothing happens
  • We've set a hefty bonus, and yet hardly anyone moves.
There are many reasons for managers to ensure they recruit new people through their own resources, using a referral recruitment program. It helps improve both the quantity and quality of your new hires. However, it also comes at a cost, primarily in terms of management time and attention. If you want your professionals to keep their eyes and ears open, it's not just a matter of asking and telling: it's more about doing.
Referral recruitment program, what is that?
According to www.wervingswoorden.nl, referral recruitment is: A recruitment method in which potential employees are referred by current or former employees or contacts from within the employee's own social network. This involves leveraging informal networks. Also known as "viavia recruitment" or "employee-recruitment-employees.".
Asking professionals to monitor colleagues has been around for a while. For some companies (Apple, Accenture), it's an explicit recruitment method that their organizations are designed for.
The classic referral recruitment program is based on rewarding the referrer, with the advice usually being to make that reward substantial and to maintain clear rules for rewards. Our problem with this is that we don't believe in such a reward system for Dutch highly educated professionals. 

When bonuses don't work...

We regularly hear that bonuses don't have the desired effect. "Even when we added an iPad to the financial bonus, we didn't get any response." The question is: what does work?
 
Our idea and experience is that there are a few steps that help.
three-step plan
1. Proud of the organization?

With a few exceptions, people only start promoting their own organization when they're proud of it. And experience shows that many people can no longer express that well. In groups we facilitate, we ask them why they like their own organization. And if they'd like to give some examples. It turns out (sometimes to the surprise of the managers) that a lot of people are quite proud of their organization, once they start looking for examples. Incidentally, it's also perfectly fine to explicitly state what you're not proud of or why you shouldn't apply here.

2. Create a longlist together

The next question is: who from your network would be a potential candidate? Guidance is also important here. If a manager sits down with a professional and reviews the network, it's often easy to arrive at a longlist. Without guidance, it often doesn't happen.

3. From longlist to shortlist, and taking action.

From the longlist, you then create a shortlist, because not everyone on the longlist will be a good choice, at least not at this stage. Consider how you'll take action for each name. Who will do what? Will the professional ask if the candidate wants to apply? Or would it be better to invite them to a knowledge event? And don't forget one more thing in the further process: the follow-up to the professional...

This article was written by Maarten van Os and Jan Willem van den Brink from DreamfactoryIt's based on a chapter from our book Colleague wanted – Proudly share your network.

If you wish to use it, we would greatly appreciate attribution.

Want to know more about this topic or how we can help your organization? Email or call us at 0348-741670.