We’re looking for 100 companies that could benefit from a six month free use of a Talmax Career Site.

Today, The Sourcerer is celebrating.

We recently put the finishing touches on an update of our website and have completed a number of significant changes and upgrades to our Talmax Career Site SaaS software. 

We are enthusiastic about the results of these efforts because we listened, very carefully, to the users of our Career Site product. The changes we have completed make that product even easier to use and, we think, more effective for the user.

A Talmax Career Site and automated candidate screening tools can plug right into a company’s existing website. The Career Site becomes the primary vehicle a company can employ to attract and screen candidates for every type of job from blue-collar to high-level executive.

Now we would like to roll this new SaaS software product out to small to mid-sized companies for a final critique before we begin a massive marketing program.

That is where you come in.  We are looking for 100 companies that could benefit from a six-month free trial of a Talmax Career Site. 

The user gets to experience ALL the features and benefits of this “plug-in” career site for a full six months, including all the candidate-screening tools.  There is NO obligation to buy anything.  All we ask is that the user completes a brief survey at the end of the six months to let us know what he/she thought about the product. 

If you and/or someone you know want to particpate, full details can be found at:  www.talmax.com/nocharge  Simply click on the red starburst.  It’s just that easy.

The Sourcerer thanks you for giving Talmax a hand.

Sick of your “normal” recruiting methods?  Tired of reviewing resumes from unqualified people who answer your ads or postings in droves, with no regard to whether or not their credentials match your need? Interested in saving your valuable time…and lowering your recruiting costs?

If this sounds like a pitch to buy a new service, it’s not.  It is simply an idea you might want to try.  It was done for a real company… and it worked!

An accounting firm needed to replace a key administrative person who had been with them for a very long time and was retiring.  They hired Talmax to find candidates.  We searched the databases of Monster and CareerBuilder for someone in their area with the background they wanted.  Talmax found about 100 or so “run-of-the-mill” possibilities, but no one really special.

Because the type of person we needed could come from a lead adinistrative job in a law firm, we searched the local member ALA site for potential candidates. That’s when the light bulb went off. 

The site contained a rather long list of vendors who were sponsors of various local ALA activities and who regularly called on all the member firms in the organization. We sent an e-mail to the contact at each of these vendor companies asking for referrals.  We included a link to a Posting Page, which contained a detailed description of the job that they could forward to anyone they felt would be qualified and interested.

We received eight referrals, all of high quality including the person who was ultimately offered and accepted the position.

How’s that for “out-of-the-box” recruiting? 

Got a recruitment story of your own?  Send it to The Sourcerer so we can share it with other interested parties.

Here’s a story of “creative recruiting” worth recounting…a Nursing organization in a small East coast city was extremely frustrated with the lack of qualified nursing personnel they were able to attract.  They tried everything from billboard advertising to radio ads; but their efforts were consistently falling short of their needs.

Finally they devised a plan that worked.  They sent an e-mail to every Nurse who currently or previously worked for them or who had registered with them at any time over the last five years, asking for referral names of qualified RN’s. They offered every person who e-mailed to them the contact information on an interested referral, the chance to participate in a drawing for an all expense paid trip for 2 to an island resort in the Caribbean.

The offer ended up on a couple of the social networks and the organization got over 120 referral responses.  They subsequently hired 6 RN’s from this program… and one of their referring sources got a great paid vacation.

The company calculated that they actually saved money when compared to the costs of using more traditional recruiting methods to find and hire 6 qualified RN’s.  Nice “Creative Recruiting”!

Did you know that referred individuals who become employees…

• Stay at your company longer
• Are less expensive to recruit
• Are often more qualified
• Adapt to your company culture more easily

 To implement a referral program many companies offer a bounty to encourage existing employees to refer friends and acquaintances for job openings. The bounty can be in the form of a cash payment, merchandise, extra time off or some other incentive.

 There are numerous cases, however, when a company’s ERP (Employee Referral Program), just doesn’t work well. This often happen when the program is not sufficiently promoted by the company or there is a lack of communication about the program within the company. One of the keys to a successful referral program requires the company to follow-up with any employee concerning the status of any person that employee referred…not doing so may insure that the employee  might never make another referral. Lack of communication from the company can easily lead to a “Why bother?” attitude from the employee.

 From the employer’s perspective, effective referral programs must track costs like bonuses paid and promotion expenses incurred for a specific campaign. Surveys should be conducted periodically to check employee satisfaction with the referral program and to ask for input to improve the program. Management should also track the success rates and number of hires that are made using the referral program during specific periods.

 According to a recent study by CareerXroads, employee referrals on a national basis account for 28.5% of all external hires. That’s a statistic to really consider if you want to increase your success in recruiting and lower your recruiting costs.

 To improve or maximize the effectiveness of an ERP, it’s important to set measurable goals.  Goals like ”increasing the percentage of hires from employee referrals from 15% to 20% over the next 12 months”. You will also want to measure how the return on your investment in a referral  program compares with the results of other recruitment options you use.

 In addition, for ease of use and consistency, automate as much of your ERP as possible and continue to promote the program through e-mails, newsletters and employee rewards. 

 Finally, a secondary source for referrals that is both effective and increasingly popular is social and professional networking using sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo and Twitter for recruiting.  Social networking enables candidates to network their way into target companies on the strength of their existing business or personal relationships. It also allows employers to identify passive candidates they might otherwise not find.  

Pros of Referral Programs

• Typically low cost depending on the size of the bounty, especially if used prior to using more traditional recruiting tools such as classified advertising, job board postings, or third-party recruiters.
•  Sometime this “birds of a feather” theory yields great candidates. The theory is based on the assumption that great employees tend to associate with or know of other people with similar traits.

 Cons of Referral Programs

• There can be problems if a referred candidate is hired and doesn’t work out or isn’t happy in the job. This situation can cause problems for the employee who referred the candidate and sometimes necessitates the employer implement an immediate solution in what could be a delicate situation.
• There can also be problems when a referred candidate is not hired, potentially causing embarrassment for the person doing the referring and reluctance to offer additional referrals in the future.
•  Often employees can be reluctant to proactively solicit referrals even when a bounty is involved.
•  Promoting an internal bounty program can be costly in terms of time investment and out of pocket expense. In addition, an Employee Referral Program generates extra administrative reporting that needs to be managed.

 Tips

• If you start an Employee Referral Program you may want to initiate your program using smaller referral bonuses to keep costs down.  You can differentiate the bonus amounts you offer as your need determines. When you launch your program, provide your employees with a written explanation including the fact that the incentives may increase or decrease based upon market conditions for sourcing specific skills. In other words, you may pay a bigger bounty to find a referral with a scarce skill and less to fill positions requiring more commonly available skill sets.
• Create a form that your employees can submit when they refer candidates. Date and time stamp this form to validate the referral when it’s time to pay the bonus.
•  Track every referral transactions carefully.
•  Decide if you want to build in a waiting period, perhaps 30 to 90 days, after the referred employee begins work, before you pay the bonus; rather than pay the bonus as soon as the referred employee starts the new job.

Putting an Employee Referral Program together takes time and no small amount of effort, but The Sourcerer knows that a program like this can be a great way to hire!