Personal referrals for a job can save companies thousands of dollars in recruitment and training costs, and often mean a great recommendation leads to a better fit for a role.
Reffind, a new Australian company co-founded 18 months ago by former realestate.com.au chief Jamie Pride and digital solutions expert Ben McGrath, aims to change the way people refer others to companies.
It wants to shake up recruiting, leading to better employee management.
Despite the benefits of referral programs — such as bonuses given to a staff member referring a successful candidate — Pride noticed in-house schemes are often ignored or poorly supported, and there was room for improvement.
“People who are referred are generally a better cultural fit, they stay longer, and 77 per cent of the ASX 100 have a referral program, but they are poorly participated in,” Pride says.
“If you’ve got this concept of a referral system and everyone knows they’re so good, why aren’t they used more effectively?”
Through his research, Pride found staff thought it time-consuming and even “painful” participating in referral programs because they have to scroll through internal job lists, speak to a person they think will be suitable, get in touch with human resources and make that match.
To help the process, Pride and McGrath came up with a mobile app that appears to be a cross between Google and Tinder.
A company registers its staff to use the app, and each morning sends a message to particular employees about positions they may be able to suggest others for.
“We use an algorithm and we look at where each employee is and what they do, and we look to send them one role that they may know somebody for,” Pride says. “If they are in finance, we may send them a job about accounting.”
The staff members receive a message and an e-card with details about that position and the fee being offered for referral.
The staffer can choose to swipe the job away, or swipe to the right.
This right swipe opens their contact list and allows them to send a text or email to a contact containing the job card and role they may be interested in.
“The beauty of this is it relates to your personal contacts rather than something like LinkedIn,” Pride says.
He says that if a staff member responds to the message, they will also receive bonus points to show they are engaging with their company. Some companies offer incentives such as prize draws for Airbnb or Uber vouchers.
While he says schemes offering incentives — sometimes as much as $10,000 for a successful referral — may lead to concerns about people suggesting others for the sake of it, the system is rarely abus-ed. “People don’t refer people into organisations when they’re not happy there,” Pride says.
“They know both parties, they know the company and they think it’s an environment they like working in.
“It typically self-corrects and over time you see very few people referring junk candidates.”
Aimed at companies with more than 500 staff, Reffind has attracted close to 100 clients including Coles, Qantas, Suncorp and Air New Zealand.
Pride has been visiting the US and finding staff to work for his company there, as Reffind expands into the North American and Southeast Asian markets.
The company is the latest disruptive player in the recruitment industry, which has seen big changes in the past decade.
The first major disruption was the advent of online jobs boards, taking the bulk of advertising away from newspapers, followed by networking sites such as LinkedIn.
But Pride says traditional recruitment tools have plenty of life left yet, and his app is just one more step in the personal referral space.
“Traditional recruitment and online jobs boards are ripe for disruption, but they’ll be around for a long time to come and there will be roles like chief executives where it’s much more effective to use a recruiter, or seek.com to find a junior role,” he says.
Reffind also uses its online app and mobile platforms to help companies engage with their staff, via simple swipe-based or yes-and-no questionnaires that require only seconds to respond.
Pride says Reffind Engage is a system that replaces 50-question staff surveys and encourages people to respond through daily interaction.
“The company sends them an e-card, and instead of that card being an open role it’s a question,” he says.
“They tap to answer yes or no and they press send and move on.
“It allows them to have a voice in their organisation, and we like to gamify that with a tick system or points.”
The more frequently staff respond, the more points they acquire to go into prize draws similar to those offered for job referrals.
By making responses voluntary — but offering incentives and with few or short questions — Pride says people are more likely to respond. This is particularly so if they are sitting on a bus or waiting for a coffee.
McGrath and Pride are also hoping to disrupt the training industry through mobile platforms and will launch Reffind Educate later this year.
Pride says staff no longer want to sit through four-hour, half-day training programs, and Reffind is planning to engage third parties to develop content — such as occupational health and safety or sexual harassment information — that can be delivered to mobile phones over short periods.
“We’re helping companies to provide that content to employees on a purely mobile basis … traditional training can take up so much time that they can’t do their day jobs,” Pride says.
“We’re trying to revolutionise the way companies communicate with employees and making it mobile and easy.”
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