Finding great people to hire isn't getting any easier.
You've heard it, read it and probably feel it - there are more open jobs than people looking for jobs - creating a talent crunch that is impacting businesses in profound ways as jobs sit unfilled.
In the past year, Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders have pumped significantly more money into traditional sourcing channels like job boards, ads and career sites - but, applicant rates and hiring outcomes have barely inched up. Over 70% of leaders are rethinking their sourcing efforts this year, and many are starting with a closer look at the potential of their employee referral programs.
With the labor shortage, remote work, and industries competing for talent, companies must think more strategically about how they source talent.
Why Referrals?
Referrals are the #1 Most Effective Source of Hire.
In a recent study of 300+ TA leaders conducted by Aptitude Research, 84% cited employee referrals as the most cost-effective way to find talent. Not only can they help recruiting teams uncover qualified talent with greater speed, they're one of the few sourcing channels that impacts nearly every other critical talent metric at the same time.
2x more likely to improve quality of hire
62% reduce time-to-fill
2x improvement in first-year retention
10x bigger talent pools
While a good referrals program has the potential to boost hiring outcomes significantly, many don't.
Why do so many referral programs fail to live up to their potential?
Many companies start off with a well-intentioned referral program, but ultimately struggle with low participation rates that lead to diminished results. All too often, programs fail to simplify the hiring journey for recruiters and job seekers or they're not aligned to more holistic talent goals (such as internal mobility, DEI or retention).
When done right, referrals can improve quality and velocity of hire while enhancing efficiencies in the recruiting process.
When we asked Madeline Laurano, leading HR analyst and founder of Aptitude Research, to research the biggest sourcing challenges leaders are facing she also uncovered something else - referral programs have huge potential to boost hiring, yet many teams struggle with optimizing their effectiveness.
This digital paper was created for one reason...
We want to help hiring teams and TA leaders overcome roadblocks and embrace referrals as the most effective way to find and engage high quality talent to fill their open jobs.
Okay, now you've got some ideas for overcoming roadblocks...
We actually have one more for you. Keep reading.
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BONUS Roadblock #4
You're not leveraging the right technology.
"Employee referrals technology is no longer a 'check the box' functionality, emerging as a critical capability in today's modern TA tech stack."
Research found that companies are investing on average in 10+ recruiting solutions but less than 50% are measuring their ROI - how they leverage each piece of tech to drive results is full of guesswork and assumptions, leading to excessive spend on solutions that don't drive real value.
Sourcing technology topped the list as the #1 area of TA tech replacement in the next 12 months. While 73% plan to continue to increase their investment in 2022, they're pulling different levers but not necessarily finding more quality talent from additional investment or changes.
Technology and automation helps companies shift from the reactive to the strategic, creating consistent and meaningful relationships with employees and candidates, while expanding talent pools. Here are a few things to consider:
The ATS is no longer enough.
A modern TA strategy is more than a standard workflow or traditional system-driven approach provided by most applicant tracking systems (ATS). Many do not have capabilities to support referrals effectively, and many are not tracked properly. An employee can share information about an opportunity, but job seekers still end up navigating to the career site (which, the ATS tracks as source of hire rather than the referral). We've also heard frustration from recruiters when it comes to the ATS, with 40% stating they spend most of their time simply looking for candidates in the ATS - diminishing effectiveness.
You'll also want to consider roadblock #1 - communication. Traditional systems don't enable referrals-specific automated and continuous communication strategies that engage employees and drive adoption. The work to get results from referrals falls on overtasked HR and hiring teams, and can be manual and resource-intensive.
Recruiters need support.
Today, HR and hiring teams are overtasked - in fact, 75% of companies struggle to recruit effectively. Amidst an ongoing talent crunch, recruiters are feeling the pressure to deliver. With 69% of sourcing still done manually, even a automation can eliminate hours per week from each recruiter's workload while increasing their overall effectiveness.
Intelligent referral solutions automate the manual burden often associated with a program - from communication to tracking and payments. With the right technology, it becomes easier for hiring teams to track and monitor the actions being taken and adjust as needed, in real time. With dashboards for referrals, engagement, conversions and progress on critical recruiting metrics it becomes much easier to prove program success and ROI.
Not everybody sits at a desk.
Sharing jobs on a laptop or through an ATS or career site is only ideal for a shrinking portion of the workforce. With more desk-less, remote and always-on people, simple and mobile-first capabilities are critical to employee participation. Traditional HR and Talent systems were not designed for modern recruiters or job seekers - they don't consider today's environment of remote, desk-less and multi-channel candidates.
Intelligent and mobile-optimized solutions allow recruiting and sourcing teams to find potential candidates quickly, but also to engage with them faster and where they prefer.
The demand for technology to support every area of recruitment has never been greater.
Could your own referral program be more effective?
Currently, only one in three companies are happy with their employee referral program.
As a result, Talent Acquisition leaders are trying new strategies to make them more effective. A survey into 300+ TA leaders revealed they're focused on four key areas:
We want to help you make referrals the workhorse of your talent acquisition strategy - the right technology can ensure your program is simple, consistent and effective. One of our global clients implemented referrals in a new region and saw 50% of their candidates in the first month come from referrals - that could be you before the end of the year. What are you waiting for?
- Fill open jobs faster.
- Build bigger, high-quality pools of talent.
- Enable a better experience for employees and recruiters.
- Support broader goals like internal mobility, retention and DEI.
- Improve the candidate, employee and recruiter experience.
- Drive improvement across every hiring outcome.
We want to help you improve hiring.
We're here for a quick conversation to understand where you have challenges. Our experts will share some stories about how Aliro has helped other TA pros overcome the same challenges, and we can decide the next best step from there.
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