What is general referral and why is it key to future recruitment?

Over the years, more and more recruiters have become convinced by the benefits of referral. The potential advantages of setting up a referral program within an organization are many. This sourcing channel requires only a small budget (only the referral bonus if recruitment is a success), and recruiting teams have minimal time to spend on the project, since it's the employees who find the candidates.

But when you set up a referral program, why limit yourself to it?

Long-term referral: the birth of general referral

With classic referral, it's already easy to think “long-term”. If 1/5 of referred candidates are recruited for an open position, what happens to the last 4?

As with other sourcing channels, not capitalizing on candidates that have not been hired is sadly often the norm. Despite the fact that everything has already been done: pre-qualification, skills identification, matching the company's values to those of the candidate, and so on. Ensuring that you keep these interesting profiles in your talent pool for future job openings is already a first step towards proactive recruitment.

But general referral can go even further.

General referral: definition

“General referral” is a term describing the referral of a profile without a specific job offer.

General referral is the same as speculative applications, except it's the employees who suggest a profile that will be contacted first when a suitable position becomes available. 

For the company, it's all positive. For some positions, it's not even necessary to go through the costly and time-consuming external sourcing stage: previously referred profiles already meet the required criteria and are contacted directly for interviews.

If they accept, the job offer publication and pre-qualification stages are no longer necessary - a considerable boost to a better Time to hire!

General referral + CRM solution: the winning duo of proactive recruitment

How can you prepare for future recruitment? The key lies in the combination of:

• the general referral sourcing channel to generate applications in anticipation of future job openings
• the creation, management and animation of a talent pool of general referred profiles within a CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) solution.

With the CleverConnect platform, when you collect general referrals from your referral platform, you can set up the automatic transfer of these profiles to a dedicated talent pool in your CRM. The two solutions are fully connected, making it easy to take action once the data has been collected.

So you can :

• grow your pool of general referred profiles as you go along, without having to take any manual action
• automatically send them communications by email, SMS and/or WhatsApp to welcome them, share employer-branded content, interesting information about their sector, etc.
• simply search your pools (referrals pool included) or use matching to determine the fit with current vacancies.
• then contact these talents or suggest that they apply for a vacancy as soon as a suitable opportunity opens up in your organization.

Traditional or general referral: the best cultural fit for successful recruitment

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No matter how the candidate is referred (for a specific position or with general referral), your employees know your organization well, and know whether it would be a good fit with their network members' aspirations. As a result, you may receive recommendations from truly motivated profiles, with or without open positions.

The matching between an organization and a candidate can be done without a job offer. Moreover, as with speculative applications, referring a profile with no connection to a specific job clearly shows that it's the match between values and aspirations that matters!

Increased freedom with general referral

One of the advantages of general referral over standard referral? Employees feel less “trapped” by the criteria of a job offer, and more involved to identify relevant profiles.There are no restrictions other than the quality of the talent's profile, its soft skills, and his or her potential ability to fit in with the company.

The freedom offered by general referral can trigger the enthusiasm of employees not motivated with traditional referral processes.

And we all know that a referral program will only work at full capacity if employees are motivated and actively participate. 

Employee referrals are now our most successful recruiting channel, accounting for 24% of all hires. Beside the “classical” referral for a concrete vacancy, so called general referrals that are not directly linked to a job offering are very popular with our employees: you submit profiles from your network that are a good fit for adesso - our recruiting team then suggests the right vacancy to the candidate.

Benjamin Nitze - Senior HR Manager @adesso SE

Guide your employees to the criteria you're looking for, even with general referrals

Employees are usually guided by the job offer to identify the most relevant profiles within their network. However, this is not the case for general referral. Even if they know the company and their contacts well, it can sometimes be useful to help them confirm their recommendation's relevance.

Best practice: facilitate general referral by creating an instruction manual that explains to your employees what you're ideally looking for... or not!

No need to work on complex elements; it's best to propose a list that's easy to remember. For example, you could work with your communications/marketing team on a small visual to be sent by email, published on your intranet or displayed in your offices.

General referral: examples of its relevance within an organization

There are many cases where general referral can be a real strength for an organization. Here are just a few examples. Of course, this list is not exhaustive, and we're discovering more use cases every day. 

• For organizations that have constant need for similar profiles: companies that are frequently looking to fill similar positions should build talent pools for those. One of the easiest ways is to leverage their employees' networks and collect general referrals.

• For organizations with a strong growth strategy over the short, medium or long term: they are well aware that, even if positions have not yet been identified, there will be recruitment needs to complement potential internal mobility. This means they need to get ahead of the game by obtaining as many qualified profiles as possible in their CRM, for future recruitments.

• For organizations planning to expand their scope: this may involve the launch of a new product or service, or the opening of new offices in other cities or countries. As part of these developments, it makes sense to prepare for the future by getting employees to recommend profiles in these areas and/or regions.

• For organizations where employees have recently arrived and are keen to participate in company life: they've just joined, they're motivated and getting to know the company. They may report their initial reactions and realize that there is a need for new profiles/skills within their team or more generally. This fresh perspective can help identify “gaps” that would be more difficult for established employees to identify.

• For organizations with a strong retention approach: giving employees the opportunity to get involved in company life, and rewarding them for it, can maximize their loyalty. Especially when they can recommend profiles they believe in, even if there isn't a job opening specifically for them. This feeling of trust is very important and facilitates retention.

Steps to integrate general referral into your recruitment strategy

As with standard referral, the most important thing is to define a process and provide a framework for general referral actions. Here are the essential steps:

1. Define the potential needs for general referral according to your organization and corporate objectives. In particular, you could provide your employees with a basic idea of what you expect.

2. Define if general referral triggers the same rewards as traditional referral, as part of your gamification strategy. Don't forget to share these rules internally.

3. Communicate internally on this feature with messages such as “remember, we always need X profile at Y time. Even without an offer, you can refer some profiles all year round...”.

4. Share success stories when a general referred profile is recruited, to show how it works and also that it pays off!

It's also important to have the right tool to manage your referral program. Our digital referral platform has the advantage of being designed for both job-specific and general referrals, including : 

• a chatbot to guide employees on their recommendation, according to whether or not there is a position suitable for the profile they wish to referred
• an automatic link with our CRM solution, enabling the automatic creation of a pipeline with general referred candidates
• the possibility of sending dedicated and personalized communications to these particular profiles, thanks to our candidate communication campaign tool

👉 Interested in our referral solution? Request a demo