

Don't Break Referral Hiring - lumens
http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/87812321597/dont-break-referral-hiring

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withdavidli
My take on the matter.

\- Incentives There are inherent risks that people will be recommending a lot
of candidates. This is not a bad thing, especially if they are candidates that
aren't easily reachable (inboxes overflowing from recruiters / passive
candidates / little social media presence), but attend events and are much
more open to speaking with fellow engineers (better technical understanding
and what day to day life is).

Candidates still have to pass the interview process so there is still Quality
Control. The person who referred the candidate is not allowed to be an
interviewer for that candidate. This is to remove personal bias and mis-
aligned incentives.

>By offering bonuses in this way, companies essentially turn their employees
into part-time contingency recruiters who now face the same bad incentives of
their full-time counterparts.

Don't understand why this is inherently bad. The worse ideas often come to
mind about recruiters, not without merit, but think about what it takes to be
a great recruiter. Consistently presenting highly qualified candidates and
building a relationship of trust with the hiring team. It's like any business,
it can be poor customer service and retain no one, or great customer service
and have loyal repeat customers.

\- Contacts In The Hands Of HR

This is well deserved criticism. People fall through the cracks for a lot of
reasons. The biggest one is probably handling too many :reqs(can be 40+ at one
time)/hiring managers/candidates. A lesser heard reason, but probably happens
a lot, the recruiter leaves the company and a lot of information gets lost.
Recruiting is a highly contigent based department. Most companies do strictly
contract or contract to hire. Recruitment in itself is a high turnover
profession.

\- Paying For Contact List

If the recruiting department is doing their job, most of that list will
already be in the system. So companies will have to figure out an efficient
pay out structure, also with so many people in the same circles, de-
duplicating lists. An introduction is worth so much more than a list.

EDIT:

Important Point: It is up to a companie's current employee if they feel
comfortable recommending someone or allowing their recruiting team to go over
their contacts. DO NOT ALIENATE YOUR EMPLOYEES!! They can either be your
biggest advocates or biggest detractors. In my opinion, retention is even more
important than active hiring.

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ozgune
I think part of the problem with referrals is that you want to know who among
your employees' contacts are the better developers.

If you pay for your employees' contact lists, how do you distinguish the
stronger developers (or do you trust that your interview process will sort
them out)?

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zachlipton
In a small company, I'm not going to refer anyone I don't already believe to
be someone I want to work with. I've also seen referral processes that ask
employees to rank the strength of their referral from "just a random resume, I
have no idea if this would make a good candidate" to "I would stake my entire
reputation at this company on this hire."

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crazypyro
"Consider paying for your employees’ contact lists, not the hires that come
from them."

As someone with little experience, is this a normal practice? I'd be a little
weird-ed out if I was asked for a contact list.

