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10 Secrets to Success of Employee Referrals in India
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10 Secrets to Success of Employee Referrals in India
Even though ERE Expo ‘09 (Spring) ended more than a month ago, I thought of writing this piece connected to that event. Thanks to an invitation from Todd Raphael of ERE, I flew down to San Diego from India and enjoyed making a presentation on “10 Secrets-to-Success of Employee Referrals in India.” It was one of the breakout sessions and obviously many had other choices to attend. To those who I missed interacting with, I am now making an attempt to share my thoughts again through this medium.
Before I got into the main theme of my presentation I shared some thoughts about India. I assumed that most in the audience would not have experienced India and hence a small introduction helped them to appreciate the context. My PowerPoint presentation is embedded below, along with this write-up. It will be good to go through that with the following synopsis in mind:
The introductory part:
* India is one-third the size of the U.S., but has almost four times the population. The U.S. is more than five times richer (GDP) than India, which is still largely an agricultural economy. However the Indian population is considerably younger. This is a huge opportunity — and also a challenge — for the leadership.
* India is a land of contrasts. This is bewildering to outsiders and exasperating to Indians. Things are changing faster than ever before but not as fast as all of us want.
* One of the reasons for the contradictions is India’s complexity.
* The IT industry is currently the best-known face of India in many parts of the world. It has had impressive growth. Even with the general slowdown it expects to do relatively well. This means that it will continue to need skilled manpower.
The hiring environment in India and the importance of “references”:
* Meeting manpower requirements is a major hiring challenge, given the complexity and contradictions in the country. Recruiters have to cope with problems of access, unique expectations, and the multiple influence groups. The bulk of what follows is an attempt to cope with much of this.
About my employer, Aricent:
* Aricent is an international leader in the field of communications software. It believes in restricting its business to niche communication software development, testing, and maintenance rather than spreading thin into multiple application areas. It has operations in 19 countries worldwide. About 80% of development work happens in India.
* Some of our top co-creations with our esteemed “who’s who” list of customers in this line of business have been amazing.
* Aricent’s success in the field of communication software also lies in its capabilities of hiring the right people at the right time, and doing so using the most cost-effective channels and processes. One of the salient features of hiring at Aricent has been its employee referral program named “iRefer.”
iRefer: The Case Study
I presented Aricent’s iRefer program to illustrate the theme of my presentation, “10 Secrets-to-Success of Employee Referrals in India.” Let us now see what these 10 secrets are:
Inspiring Awards and Recognition:
* A successful participant of this program can easily earn 10% to 15% of his/her annual salary through referral bonuses, plus many other special awards in kind.
* Special monthly/quarterly/annual prizes for winning referrers have always been a big draw amongst the employees.
Adhering to Service Level Agreements:
* The members of the recruitment team are committed to certain SLAs with the referrers as part of the program. Data showed that the adherence to SLAs have been approximately 95%. This gives the confidence to the employees to participate in such a program.
Enhancing Participation:
* The team focuses on increasing participation in different ways. The participation has grown from 9% to 35% in the last seven to eight years.
* Transparency in process, timeliness at every stage of process, personal engagement with individuals and groups, and effective internal communication have been the essential factors in enhancing participation.
Branding and Communication:
* Unlike in many organizations, the internal branding and communication for an employee referral program are handled by the recruitment team itself. These activities are not outsourced to the corporate marketing or the communications teams. This helps to reduce the cycle time considerably since there is exclusive focus.
* The essence of branding and communication has been to feel the pulse of the employees and build themes around that to inspire them to participate in all the programs under “iRefer.” In fact, the brand “iRefer” too was a result of an all-employee global contest for proposing the most appropriate name for the referral program. In the below presentation, one can see various creative uses of different communication methods.
Source:
http://www.ere.net/2009/05/14/10-secrets-to-success-of-employee-referrals-in-ind
Before I got into the main theme of my presentation I shared some thoughts about India. I assumed that most in the audience would not have experienced India and hence a small introduction helped them to appreciate the context. My PowerPoint presentation is embedded below, along with this write-up. It will be good to go through that with the following synopsis in mind:
The introductory part:
* India is one-third the size of the U.S., but has almost four times the population. The U.S. is more than five times richer (GDP) than India, which is still largely an agricultural economy. However the Indian population is considerably younger. This is a huge opportunity — and also a challenge — for the leadership.
* India is a land of contrasts. This is bewildering to outsiders and exasperating to Indians. Things are changing faster than ever before but not as fast as all of us want.
* One of the reasons for the contradictions is India’s complexity.
* The IT industry is currently the best-known face of India in many parts of the world. It has had impressive growth. Even with the general slowdown it expects to do relatively well. This means that it will continue to need skilled manpower.
The hiring environment in India and the importance of “references”:
* Meeting manpower requirements is a major hiring challenge, given the complexity and contradictions in the country. Recruiters have to cope with problems of access, unique expectations, and the multiple influence groups. The bulk of what follows is an attempt to cope with much of this.
About my employer, Aricent:
* Aricent is an international leader in the field of communications software. It believes in restricting its business to niche communication software development, testing, and maintenance rather than spreading thin into multiple application areas. It has operations in 19 countries worldwide. About 80% of development work happens in India.
* Some of our top co-creations with our esteemed “who’s who” list of customers in this line of business have been amazing.
* Aricent’s success in the field of communication software also lies in its capabilities of hiring the right people at the right time, and doing so using the most cost-effective channels and processes. One of the salient features of hiring at Aricent has been its employee referral program named “iRefer.”
iRefer: The Case Study
I presented Aricent’s iRefer program to illustrate the theme of my presentation, “10 Secrets-to-Success of Employee Referrals in India.” Let us now see what these 10 secrets are:
Inspiring Awards and Recognition:
* A successful participant of this program can easily earn 10% to 15% of his/her annual salary through referral bonuses, plus many other special awards in kind.
* Special monthly/quarterly/annual prizes for winning referrers have always been a big draw amongst the employees.
Adhering to Service Level Agreements:
* The members of the recruitment team are committed to certain SLAs with the referrers as part of the program. Data showed that the adherence to SLAs have been approximately 95%. This gives the confidence to the employees to participate in such a program.
Enhancing Participation:
* The team focuses on increasing participation in different ways. The participation has grown from 9% to 35% in the last seven to eight years.
* Transparency in process, timeliness at every stage of process, personal engagement with individuals and groups, and effective internal communication have been the essential factors in enhancing participation.
Branding and Communication:
* Unlike in many organizations, the internal branding and communication for an employee referral program are handled by the recruitment team itself. These activities are not outsourced to the corporate marketing or the communications teams. This helps to reduce the cycle time considerably since there is exclusive focus.
* The essence of branding and communication has been to feel the pulse of the employees and build themes around that to inspire them to participate in all the programs under “iRefer.” In fact, the brand “iRefer” too was a result of an all-employee global contest for proposing the most appropriate name for the referral program. In the below presentation, one can see various creative uses of different communication methods.
Source:
http://www.ere.net/2009/05/14/10-secrets-to-success-of-employee-referrals-in-ind
