Handling Employee Referrals
Posted March 9th, 2015
When recruiting job candidates, companies try to strike a balance in the resources they devote to the hiring process — the manpower, time and effort they expend in evaluating and recruiting people. For example, companies cannot simply fly in and interview every applicant. Not only is this not feasible financially, it would not be a wise use of resources, since many candidates can be disqualified after looking at their application materials.
Among the most coveted of job candidates are those people who have been referred by employees of the company. Many companies encourage employees to suggest possible candidates for job openings because this is a good way to recruit high quality candidates.
Employee referrals are valued because employees know the culture of the company and know people who are not only qualified in their professional field, but outstanding performers. so their recommendations generally carry a good deal of weight.
The dilemma many companies face, however, is how they should handle these employee referrals. Some companies may, for example, treat them just like any other job candidate who has submitted a resume. These referrals then have to go through the same procedure as anyone else.
But other companies take a different approach. Because employee referrals are so eagerly sought after, these people are given preferential treatment in the hiring process. For example, they are guaranteed at least a telephone interview. In other words, the company expends a lot of additional resources in the hiring process for the referrals.
The question is, what is the best way to handle this situation? Human resource professionals say neither of the above two approaches is efficient, and they recommend something in between the two. You don’t treat these people as you would any person who has submitted a resume, nor do you treat them like they are Warren Buffet.
What human resource professionals say is that these people are entitled to a quicker response on whether they are a candidate, usually within about a week after being referred. They can simply be contacted by phone or email. It’s a call that will take just a few minutes.
Treating them like any other candidate is not doing enough and may negatively impact the employee referral program, while rolling out the red carpet is going too far in the other direction and probably a big waste of resources.
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