Reason 1: Track how many employees participated

The key to implementing a successful employee referral program is getting your current staff members to participate. Data shows you whether you are succeeding in getting your employees to refer their friends and colleagues for your vacancies.

If data shows that you don’t really have many participants, you can rethink some of your strategies. You can offer better incentives or make the referral “game” more fun and interactive.

Reason 2: You can know which vacancies are easier to fill

Data can show you which vacancies have received more referrals than others. This can help you assess whether a particular position is hard to fill or not.

If the numbers show that you haven’t received a lot of referrals for a particular position, you can find ways on how to solve the problem. Perhaps you could increase the incentive for employees who are able to successfully refer an applicant for that hard-to-fill vacancy.

Reason 3: You can track whether your social recruitment strategies are working

You can track which social media channels are actually bringing you the great candidates that you need. For instance, your employees could be more active on Facebook than any other channel, that’s why they’re more likely be able to share your ads on their network.

If you want to boost your low LinkedIn recruitment results, you can offer additional incentives for your employees if they sign up on LinkedIn and share the job postings there.

Reason 4: You can know how many new hires came from referrals

Research shows that referrals are 3-4 times more likely to be hired than non-referral candidates. Data can show you if this assumption is true based on how many you’ve hired since you implemented your employee referral program

Reason 5: You can know how long it took to onboard a new hire

New hires coming from employee referrals are trained and onboarded faster than hires from other sources. They also tend to start their jobs sooner than other hires: candidates from career sites start after 55 days; those found on job boards start after 39 days, and employee referrals start after 29 days.

Ultimately, data can show you if your referred hires got onboarded faster than hires from other sources.

Having metrics is essential in determining the success of all employee referral programs. It thrives on baseline and endline data in order to help you analyze your current strategy and, therefore, allow you to improve your program accordingly.

Don’t have an employee referral program yet? Contact Firstbird.