How To Use Social Media To Increase Effectiveness of Employee Referral Programs?

“Chalte Chalte, mere ye geet yaad rakhna, kabhi alvida na kahna”, a very beautiful bollywood number evokes the memory of school farewell. This song being played at the time of parting with friends was immensely touching. It was the time when internet use was not popular and friends were not sure if they will be able to remain in touch with each other, forever. There was no social media tool to remain connected with most of the friends.

The current situation has changed drastically compared to earlier times. With the coming of social networking sites, we came in touch with most of our friends. We used the medium to even find our long forgotten friends and acquaintance. Most of us are regular user on internet and use social media to remain connected with our friends from school to colleges, friends next door to colleagues as well. The social media makes it possible to connect to even friends of our friends. Most of the people prefer to connect with friends via internet and use the medium to find information and also share them with friends.

The basic premise of social media is based on one person having many contacts. The same logic applies to the use of employee referral programs. Hence, it becomes quite natural to use social media to increase the effectiveness and quality of the employee referral programs. The very nature of social media makes it the best fit for the ERP. It is the fastest medium of communication and ERP requires quicker dissemination of job information. The ERP must encourage the employees to dig into their contacts on regular basis and share the job vacancy to generate quality leads.

Most of the people working in the IT sector are always connected to the internet. The job description of the required vacancy can be shared with their social network contacts very easily and in shortest time required. People tend to rely on the information provided by their contacts and the level of trust is very high. The job information tends to get shared and viewed by maximum number of people. The ERP should try to integrate social media with their internal portal and one click sharing method should be employed. The employee will get discouraged if the job sharing process is not simple and quick. Even if the job sharing does not lead to getting potential candidate, it becomes a very successful tool for creating brand image of the company. Here, the employee becomes the face of the company. This can benefit the smaller companies to get noticed by the job seekers.

The ERP should create information on jobs suitable to be used in the social media. Use of info-graphics and humorous Office Humor images to spread the information will work more effectively as people tend to read humorous content earnestly rather than glossing over the information shared in a very mundane form. Use of humorous content and videos make the information go viral. They spread like wild fire in the jungle.

Use of social media helps the employees to get connected with people having common skills on sites like LinkedIn. The employees gets encouraged to make new connection as they can expect to learn new things and groom their skill set, get information as to recent developments in other companies. It will lead to personal and professional growth for the employees and at the same time it becomes easy to locate the connections with desired skill set.

Integrating social media to the ERP helps the employees to use their free time on holidays to get in touch with their contacts and share job openings with them. The companies should remove restriction on using social media in the office premises and during working hours to actively participate in the ERP of the company. Infosys has recently allowed the use of social media in their office. Social media can also be used for referral tracking. The employees can get information on the number of positive referrals made by them, different stages cleared by the candidate in the recruitment process and their incentives due etc.

The use of social media by the ERP also helps in conducting the background check of the potential candidate before conducting the interview. Currently many companies gather information on the candidate to know about their interest, ideological inclination and their ambition etc. to find out if they will fit the company’s work culture.

Use of social media is gaining importance in ERP and will be a game changer in the field of talent acquisition.