I recently finished reading John Jantsch’s best seller The Referral Engine –Teaching Your Business to Market Itself. As you may know from reading myblog postings, I am an avid business book reader, with shelf after shelfcrammed with business, marketing, sales, recruiting, hiring, branding,consulting, assessment focused books that I have read, many more than once. The Referral Engine is one of the fewthat I have read whose information can be immediately applied to any businessthat wants to grow. And what business doesn’t want to grow!Yes, I haveread many other books that have offered new, exciting and differentperspectives on a particular topic, but in most cases the new, exciting anddifferent perspectives always need tweaking on the part of the reader to makethem applicable to your business. Not this book. In fact, our company is in theprocess of applying Jantsch’s Referral Engine process to how we do business. Iwill report our progress in future blogs.In order todevelop a referral engine company, one has to understand what your companydoes, how you do it, your ideal customers, and train your employees, customersand partners to be aware of this and be open to referring business. And perhapsmost importantly, a referral engine company must always be giving customers andpartners referrals with no expectation of getting referrals in return. However, asI was reading this book I began to think of a different type of referralengine. Instead of looking for referred business, a company could apply thesame principles to candidate referrals.It wouldall start with understanding what the position requires (not job description,think performance profile); what makes an ideal candidate and what would be acceptableto the hiring manager; and what the hiring process is and setting properexpectations. Once thisis in place, you then need to train your employees, customers and partners. If yourbest hires come from employee referrals, your goal should be that the majorityof your hires come from employee referrals. Are all your employees aware ofposition requirements, ideal candidates and is a process in place that willencourage your employees to always be referring? Get your employees to alwaysbe thinking of referring candidates.Yourcustomers are your candidates. No matter the source, every candidate is acustomer. They are buying, you are selling. Whether or not they are hired, if acandidate had a good experience; was treated with respect during however longthe hiring process; received prompt and relevant feedback; they will spread theword about your company and refer candidates to you. Are your recruiters makingall candidates aware of position requirements, ideal candidates? Are yourrecruiters always asking “Who else do you know? Who did you work with who coulddo this job? Who would you like to be on this project with you?” Setting theexpectation of getting referrals from candidates starts with the first contactwith the candidate. And lastly,most businesses have some type of a partner relationship, everything from IT toaccounting to marketing/advertising to outside recruiters. These should becompanies and people that you respect for what they do. You would value theirinput and recommendations. If you have partner relationships make them aware ofyour position requirements, your ideal candidate and make sure that theyunderstand your hiring process. In orderfor your candidate referral engine to run smoothly you need to prime the pump, youneed to give in order to get. In the case of the employee referral source,rewards, incentives and acknowledgement of referral could be enough. Evenmaking referrals part of a job requirement sends a strong message as to theimportance of referred candidates. With thecandidate referral source what you give could include, acknowledgement of referral, thank you note from the C-level,on-going contact with candidates not hired regarding future openings, advice oncareer, job opportunities outside your company and periodic updates regardingthe referred candidate. And withthe partner referral source what you give could be business, candidates who maynot be the fit for your openings, industry information as well as updatedinformation on your company and the candidates that they referred. Jantschsuggests that as human beings it is in our DNA to want to give something toothers, that we are social beings and that giving makes us feel good, importantand part of something much bigger than we are. If you don’t ask for or make it hard for anyone to refer candidates toyour company you are missing out on some potentially great hires, but you arealso doing those who would refer a disservice by not allowing them to dosomething that is in their nature. And if youdon’t ask or make it easy to get referrals someone else will. And it could beyour competition.
