Interesting article from the NY Times on Jobvite, a SF based startup focused on recruiting systems integrated with social-networking applications. I assume we’ll see this functionality from every recruiting application, but hats off to this company for making this work. Employee referrals are the best way to grow your team and it’s always been a challenge for recruiters to manage the hand-off between the employee, candidate, and recruiter, largely because it leverages multiple systems that really do not talk to each other (email, web, recruiting systems with workflow, etc.). These systems seem to extend the recruiting application via Outlook and the social networking apps, making it easier for everyone involved to source their talented friends and acquaintances.
I’ve often wondered if employers could have a “yield rate” for new hires, meaning the number of qualified leads, or even introductions, to a company. Imagine getting a metric showing the yield rate of certain sites or job families and using that to help the leaders address this imbalance with the recruiting pipeline. Personally, I think the next phase of employee referrals programs will move from connecting potential candidates with actual open roles to something more grounded in personal or professional interests that the company sponsored. Lots of companies currently allow people to sign-up for email updates of newly open jobs or even updates on the company’s new products, but that gets old fast.
Instead, I think companies need to expand their efforts horizontally (versus vertically which is all about filling open roles). If an organization is doing sector or industry-leading work, as evidenced by awards or their people contributing to websites or communities of practice online hubs, then people will want to associate themselves with this new source of professional development or relationship building. It’s one thing to sponsor a tech conference every now and then, but it’s another thing to actively contribute to the larger professional community in a way that increases knowledge, fosters relationships between members, and benefits the larger community. It effect, it becomes truly about being a great corporate/organizational citizen and if you get some near term hires out of it, fantastic. The longer-term goal of being a great corporate citizen will likely result in higher retention rates, greater percentages of higher quality employees self-selecting to connect with an organization, and better overall reputation. In short, while I’m intrigued by this next phase of recruiting, just like anything else, this is just another piece of software; how it fits within a broader set of actions is really going to differentiate and help organizations win.
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