The best candidates for your jobs are often times part of your existing employees’ networks. This means they have already interacted with somebody within your organisation and might already have a feel for what it’s like to work there.
The definition of employee network has been widened with the growth of social networks, meaning we can now manage having more people in our networks than ever before. We may not see these people on a daily basis but we know where to find them online, and vice versa.
Our friends at RolePoint have looked at the difference social makes to employee networks in the deck below.
Takeaways:
- Employee networks have grown with social media, offering access to: structured career data through sites like LinkedIn and unstructured data through networks like Facebook.
- Employees are continually adding new contacts and growing personal networks. Encouraging employees to share jobs into their networks offers the potential to reach these connections, but it is only a chance. A direct message is always going to prove to be more effective.
- All networks consist of an inner and outer circle. The inner circle includes those connections where an offline relationship exists based on work interactions and personal knowledge. The outer circle consists of those connections who have connected online. This offers access to data for mining and matching, and reach for personal messaging via an established connection.
- When you consider the potential reach offered by the combined population of all of your employees, it’s easy to recognise the potential of operating your employee referral program around social connections.
- The key is to enable employees to weight the referrals they make, giving priority to those in their inner circle whilst leaving the way open to search all connections however distant for a skills and experience match. The use of data mining technology enables recruiters to identify potential candidates based on skills and experience of any employee who permits access by signing up for the employee referral program.
RELATED: Why Employee Referrals are the Best Source of Hire.
