Where your ATS falls short: Employee Referrals
First, consider how an Applicant Tracking System could be beneficial to your company/business. The point of an ATS is to help manage your recruiting and hiring needs. Now this might sound obvious, but your ATS is focused on tracking applicants not referrals from employees.
What does that mean for your business?
Traditionally, employees aren’t considered part of the scope. This leaves the person making the referral with no access to track the candidate’s progress or their bonus. An employee might send their referral off into a black hole, only to find out after emailing your talent acquisition team that the candidate they referred was disqualified months ago. This is a discouraging progress for employees to consistently be unaware of what happened to the referral they made.
Consider what lack of engagement and transparency can do to an employee. The employees enthusiasm to recommend a great candidate for your position has diminished. Now to that employee it feels more like playing the lottery than having a reliable source of passive income. However, you (the employer) know that referrals are much more than that. Referrals are one of the best sources for putting high quality candidates in your recruitment pipeline. Often, 25% of referrals result in a new hire. Why take the chance on missing that opportunity due to a lack of referral tracking?
So, where did things go awry? The referral process!
Using a mainstream ATS designed for recruiters, your employees have extra steps that become more of a burden than a bonus. First, the employee visits the career page located on your site. Then the employee has to sign in and navigate to the referral portal. Is the process done yet? Nope, still another step to make a referral. At this point the employee submits the candidates information to invite them to apply. Now the employee waits…
When you have busy engineers or front-line workers this can be a lot to ask of them. Making a referral should be a process of ease, instead it can take around 10-15 minutes out of their day just to be left in the dark on the process of the candidate they referred. Do you think that motivates your employees to take time out of their busy schedule to make referrals? Of course not! Transparency should be key when it comes to your referral software.
How can you improve the referral process for your employees?
Referrals need to be two things; simple and engaging. ERIN uses the dynamic duo automation and engagement to bring ease to the admin and employee experience. ERIN, the employee referral software allows employees to make referrals in under 30 seconds. Employees can track openings, candidates, and bonuses from anywhere with ERIN’s mobile-first platform.
On the admin side, ERIN offers a fully automated experience mapped to your ATS. ERIN takes a hands-off approach with automated payroll reports and billing. Why make things harder for yourself and your employees? ERIN uses automation to provide ease for all involved.
Next time you’re wondering why your employees aren’t making referrals it might make sense to ask yourself whether the software is benefiting the admins or the employees.
Written by Zak Wehman
