Zao graylink webinar launching and maintaining your employee referral program - sep 2013

Launching & Maintaining Your Employee Referral Program

Thanks for joining us! The webinar will begin in a few minutes

About the Host

Ziv Eliraz is the founder and CEO of Zao. Ziv is an expert when it comes to employee referral programs and social recruiting, having worked with many

companies to launch and maintain their employee referral programs. He passionately believes trusted referrals are the best way to hire well, fast!

Questions during the webinar?

For questions, please use the Q&A box anytime!

Launching Employee Referral Programs

www.zao.com [email protected]

In this webinar, we’ll exploreThe impact of referral programs

Why referral programs fail

How to prepare, launch and maintain referral programs that meet your goals & how Zao can help!

JOIN US



Why you want referral hires

Referrals are #1 in

employee retention

rate after one year at

46% vs. 22% for job

boards

Employee referrals are the

#1 source of hire

Referrals are the #1 ROI

Referrals produce the highest quality candidates

- they are 5 times more likely to be hired

Referrals are the highest quality hire

Your employees are more connected than ever!



THE PROBLEM - LOW ENGAGEMENT

Is this the response you’re getting when you ask employees for referrals?!

Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



THE PROBLEM - NOT PREPARING

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We have a referral program? Since when?

• You’ve heard it before... Failing to plan is like planning to fail

• No one will refer candidates to a program they don’t know exists or doesn’t have clear rules

• Launching for the first time or reinventing your program? Let people know loud and clear



PROBLEM - FAILURE TO THINK LONG-TERM

• Equal amounts of time and energy should go into the launch, & how to sustain your referral program in the the long term

• A big splash launch is nice, but how will you sustain engagement long term?

Implementing a Strategic Employee Referral Program

PART 1: PREPARING TO START

PART 2: LAUNCH AND ONGOING ACTIVITIES

PART 3: LONG TERM ENGAGEMENT



• Create a strategy! Have a plan!

• Make sure everyone understands why it’s important

• Understand your team. Are they in-house or remote? What motivates them? How are they built?

• Get everyone in the company involved, including the CEO

• Have a social and mobile strategy

Strategic programs can increase referrals from 16% to 48% of

external hires

STEP #1MAKE YOUR PROGRAM STRATEGIC



Valve Employee Handbook:“Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe... One of the most valuable things you can do as a new employee is tell us who else you think we should hire.”



• Sample goals:

• % of Hires: Increase % of referral hires from 15% to 30%

• % of Employees referring: Increase % of employees that made a referral from 10% to 40%

• % of Employees that gave a lead: Increase from 5% to 30%

• % of Applicants that come from referrals

• Time to hire? Quality of hire?

STEP #2SET GOALS TO MEASURE SUCCESS

Image courtesy of tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



STEP #3HAVE A BRANDED CAREER SITE

MAKE SURE YOU SHOWCASE:

• Your Employer Value Proposition

• What does your brand represent?

• Why should an applicant come work for you?

• How are you different? What makes you special?

• Don’t just throw job descriptions out there...

• Make sure it works on mobile devices

Major benefit: they help promote job listings and show off your company culture and why people would want to work with you!

Career sites are the #1 influencer on

referrals.



WE SAY YES TO:

✓ Videos

✓ Images

✓ Open jobs

✓ A fun background

✓ A story about your company

STEP #4WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR CAREER SITE

REMEMBER THE GOAL IS...:

• What is your EVP?

• What makes you special?

SAMPLE FREE CAREER SITE ON ZAO



• The best way to offer rewards is to set a specific cash reward for each open position position

• At Zao we’ve seen rewards of $2,500-$5,000 bring a ton of engagement, but companies with rewards as low as $250 have hired as well

• Offer at least $1000 to see high employee engagement!

• Spice it up with non cash rewards

Image courtesy of Gualberto107 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Cash rewards for referrals are the #1 incentive for getting

employees to participate

STEP #5SET UP REWARDS



• Most companies send job descriptions and expect resumes to come back. That’s too broad of a question. Instead, do these three things:

1. Ask employees to forward jobs to 5-10 friends a week

2. Make it easy for employees to refer friends; accept name-only referrals

3. Offer autopost to employees

• Zao automates these three tasks, making it easy for you to get great referrals!

STEP #6ASK SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

Don’t give your employees a headache!

Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



• Have you ever hired someone as a result of a referral from someone who wasn’t your employee?

✓ Business partners

✓ Former employees

✓ Vendors

✓ Friends

STEP #7CHANGE THE QUESTION



• Rather than just limiting yourself to the network of your employees, consider asking your employees reach out to:

✓ Business partners

✓ Former employees

✓ Vendors

✓ Friends

• Consider offering a reward to non employees (Zao handles this automatically)

STEP #7CHANGE THE QUESTION?







Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• Timing is important - never on a friday...

• Announce your referral program at a company meeting, happy hour or create your own referral launch party!

• Be clear on the rewards and other game elements that may be relevant

• Zao helps walk you through your launch, making sure you’re ready to go!

STEP #8MAKE YOUR LAUNCH COUNT



What you should tell your employees

• Explain and demonstrate exactly what the program is & how it works.

• Tell them why they should care, how they are helping out your company, their friends and themselves

• Mention you want to hire great people they refer so they can work with them!

• Zao sends you the resources you need including employee tutorial videos and graphic banners, making sure your employees are informed!

STEP #9BE CLEAR AND CONCISE



STEP #10ONGOING MARKETING OF THE PROGRAM

• An employee referral program is not something you launch, it’s something you DO.

• Look for multiple opportunities to get the word out - email, company newsletters, social media.

• Graphics and banners are great attention grabbers - put them in public places



• If you’re using an automated system, make sure it’s one where employees can get on board quickly.

• Count the clicks. Seriously. The more clicks, the less people will sign up.

• Zao offers one click sign ups. All you need to do is invite your employees to join!

STEP #11MAKE SIGN UPS SIMPLE



• Tap into employees’ social networks

• Allow them to share jobs and recommend friends on social networks

• Make sure they are able to share jobs that include your company logo and link to your branded career site

STEP #12GET SOCIAL



YOUR JOBS ARE NOT AS CUTE AS THIS



STEP #12GET SOCIAL WITH AUTO-POST



• Your employees are each connected to hundreds of people on social networks. But how do you reach these people?

• They don’t have time to scan all your open jobs and match people manually

• Zao has advanced algorithms that match your job description with the profiles of your employees friends, automatically picking great contacts!

STEP #13OFFER SMART MATCHING



• Bring groups of employees together in a room

• Bring junk food!

• The goal of the meeting is for every attendee to:

✓ Give you names of the best people they ever worked with

✓ Forward jobs on to people most likely to know relevant candidates

STEP #13 (If you don’t have smart match)LINKEDIN/FACEBOOK PIZZA PARTIES



• Let employees know that their privacy is 100% respected

• Make sure data is kept private and goes to the right people!

• Don’t make recommendations public, use private messages instead

• Zao takes care of this for you! We make sure all recommendations are done privately

STEP #14RESPECT EMPLOYEE PRIVACY

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net







STEP #15GIVE FEEDBACK

• Update employees on the hiring status of their referrals

• If you don’t like the referrals some employees are making - just tell them. Give them feedback.

• Highlight employees that have a good referral to hire ratio

• Don’t let resumes go into a “black hole”

• Zao automatically updates your employees on the status of their referrals!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



What is gamification? The use of game mechanics (such as points and leaderboards) to encourage engagement in employee referral programs.

Gamification is a great tool to avoid the dreaded post-launch drop in participation that most employee referral programs face

Image courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

STEP #16 ADD GAMIFICATION



• Use gamification to tell employees how they are doing and give recognition for any action they take within your referral program

• Offer points and badges for achievements in your referral program

• Keep the feedback loop alive - different points or badge levels help emphasize what’s important to you

GAMIFICATION - TIP #1 MAKE REFERRALS FUN

Sample point structure on Zao



GAMIFICATION - TIP #2CREATE FRIENDLY COMPETITION

• Create different competitions to fuel engagement and buzz around your referral program.

• Competitions can be individual, or between departments or between office locations!

• Example: offer movie tickets or even a day off to the team that refers the most applicants!

• You can also offer fixed rewards to the top 5 people on the leaderboard



• Since companies typically hire 10-15% of their workforce over a year, even if most of your hires are referrals, more than 90% of your employees will be left out!

• Allow points or quality actions to be redeemable for prizes

• For example: Offer 100 points or a small reward for referring a qualified or interviewed candidate

GAMIFICATION - TIP #3ALLOW MORE WINNERS



• In addition to offering referral rewards, give out small prizes that can be redeemed immediately

• For example if someone makes a qualified referral, you could give them a $25 dollar Starbucks or amazon card. You can also offer movie tickets

• Talk to your employees and let them choose these smaller prizes

GAMIFICATION - TIP #3 (continued)OFFER SMALL PRIZES



GAMIFICATION TIP #4RECOGNIZE EFFORT PUBLICLY

Sample leaderboard on Zao



GAMIFICATION - TIP #5BRING THE PRIZES INTO THE LOBBY

• Prizes look much more real and obtainable when they are physically there.

• Make competitions date sensitive (month, quarter)

• Set a date when someone will take home the prize



STEP #17VARY PROMOTIONS• Don’t let your program become

static in the long term

• Employee referral success stories are a GREAT way to motivate your employees to refer. Share these success stories

• Change it up from time to time and offer shocking rewards! It’s a great way to WOW people

Shocking reward recently offered by Hubspot!



• A referral program that has ongoing success is one that engages employees on an ongoing basis, not just at launch time.

• Remember the goals we set? Track them on an ongoing basis and look for trends. If the metrics are going down, it’s time to refresh

STEP #18MEASURE YOUR PROGRAM’S PULSE



• Automation lets you do things, week after week, which you couldn’t do manually, like:

✓ Have employees review their network against new jobs in the system

✓ Share leaderboard achievements every week

✓ Enable employees to share jobs on an automated, recurring basis

✓ Notify employees if a friend applies

STEP #19AUTOMATE THE RECURRING TASKS

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tell your employees to sit back and relax, automation does the hard work for them!



• Mobile recruiting is on the rise!

• 19% of job seekers use mobile devices but... 57% would like to use mobile devices to search for jobs!

• Make sure your career site is mobile!

• Zao allows mobile referrals

Our world today

STEP #20MAKE SURE YOU’RE MOBILE

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


#ZAOdotcom

$

• Offering a referral reward to non-employees increases engagement 10-50X

• Unlike employees, non-employees don’t have the same intrinsic motivators for referrals

• Referral rewards are an extremely important motivator in this case

• Rewarding non employees lets you change the question from “who do you know” to “who might your friends know”?

STEP #21EXTEND REWARDS TO NON EMPLOYEES


#ZAOdotcom

• You email people you trust every day, and those people know people. Why not remind them you’re offering referral rewards?

• Add a link to your email signature

• Be creative! Add graphics!

• Make a signature for your employees too

STEP #22USE YOUR EMAIL SIGNATURE (OFFER IT TO YOUR EMPLOYEES, TOO!)

$2,000 REWARDRefer-a-friend & get rewards!

If you refer someone who’s hired


#ZAOdotcom

• Don’t forget you need to pay your taxes, and referrers need to pay theirs

• If you handle it yourself, speak with your accounting firm

• Remember there are different laws in different countries

• If you work with us, we’ll take care of payments to non employees for you (Audited by E&Y)

STEP #23TAX PAYMENTS

Image courtesy of cooldesign/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net


#ZAOdotcom

• Consider a month or quarter, where instead of rewarding employees, the entire company works towards social goals

• For example, donate toys for tots or a meal for those in need for every qualified applicant

• Let your employees choose the social goals they want to work towards

STEP #24GIVE BACK


#ZAOdotcom

A) Planning for the long term, not just the launch.

B) Ongoing maintenance and tweaking.

C) Use a platform with automation and smart matching to make referrals easy

D) Gamification makes referrals fun and sustains long term interest.

E) Consider extending your rewards to trusted non-employees

F) Support mobile: both your applicants and referrers are on the go

SUMMARYA SUCCESSFUL REFERRAL PROGRAM IS ALL ABOUT ENGAGEMENT



FEEDBACK, IDEAS & QUESTIONS

Send us your questions in the Q & A box ??

? ?

?

THANKS FOR ATTENDING

Reach out any time at [email protected]