Monetary reward helps employers reach passive jobseekers
They’re everywhere, but not easy to find. They’re sought feverishly by the headhunting and recruiting industry, yet they’re blithely unaware of their potential value.
They’re “passive jobseekers” — people who are simply good at doing their job and happy doing it — but who may be interested in making a switch if the right offer came along.
A Toronto company thinks the way to reach this group is through their friends and co-workers. And to encourage the friend or co-worker to make the introduction, the company behind Bohire.com is posting cash rewards — right up there with “Job,” “Company” and “Location.”
The best hires are the ones made through a referral, said Vincent Tsang, vice-president of business development of Bohire. At a previous company he started, one-half of the staff who came through the door were referred by an employee, friend or member of the family.
“So we just thought, if direct referrals are the best way, why not build a community around it?” said Tsang.
Bohire.com is set up a little differently from most job boards. That’s because people don’t directly apply for a job posted on the site. They have to refer someone else — or just as likely have a friend refer them — and the person referred has to agree to have her resumé submitted.
There is no fee to post a vacancy. The employer sets whatever cash amount it thinks is fitting as a reward. Bohire earns 30 per cent of it and the referrer earns the remainder, which is the amount posted on the job board.
Employers only pay when they fill the vacancy and, as a guarantee the person referred is a quality hire, the cash reward is fully refundable during the first 30 days the person is on the job.
Internal referrals are good at putting an employer in touch with competent, trustworthy and hard-working people, and that’s because people will seldom bring a friend or relative into the workplace who will reflect badly on them.
Bohire referrers are not constrained by the same considerations. However, employers can rate referrers, so someone recommending a friend who’s completely not suited for the position will be marked poorly and lose credibility in his next referral.
Since Bohire was launched in January, it has attracted 150 employers that have posted 250 jobs on the site. The community of referrers, who have to be registered, numbered just under 1,100 at the end of last month.
Lindsay Ortega, recruitment specialist at Toronto-based law firm Miller Thomson, is a fan of the service. She has put up 15 postings and recently completed the hiring process for the fifth candidate found through Bohire.
Ortega was initially drawn to the service because she could post for free.
“At first, I wasn’t so sure what results to expect. But with the boom of social networking on the Internet, we started feeling positive about it very quickly,” she said.
Like most employers, Miller Thomson posts its openings in a variety of media, including trade publications, the careers page on the company website, internal job boards and online job boards.
The latter usually nets a glut of applications, “which you really have to sift through to see who’s qualified. It’s quite time-consuming,” said Ortega. The jobs she posts on Bohire give her only a few referrals each, but most of them are qualified for the job, she said.
Miller Thomson also uses search agencies but those can be costly. With the five hires Ortega has made through Bohire, the law firm has saved about 85 per cent of what it would have paid to find people through an agency, she said. For now, the law firm will continue using traditional recruiting methods, but it will likely review its strategy in the near future, said Ortega.
However, employers relying on cash rewards for referrals should be careful about how aggressively they recruit someone out of another job, cautioned Janice Payne, a senior partner at the Ottawa law firm Nelligan O’Brien Payne and leader of its employment practice group.
A few years ago Payne represented telecom marketer Mary Egan who successfully fought to have her severance pay brought up from 12 weeks to nine months. The argument Payne and Egan made in Egan v. Alcatel was Egan had been recruited out of a very secure, well-paying job that she had no intention to leave. She left her job of 20 years after two employees from Alcatel persuaded her to join the company. Unbeknownst to her, they shared an $8,000 reward offered through the company’s internal job referral program for their effort.
“The fact that money was paid as a reward mattered, but I don’t think her not knowing mattered,” said Payne. “It’s important to appreciate the importance of recruitment for severance packages. If the recruitment was aggressive and targeted, it’s going to be more important to the court. On the other hand, the longer the employee lasts with the new organization, the less important the recruitment.”
Employers using a service such as Bohire.com should be aware they may have to pay out bigger severance packages if the new hire leaves a good job and doesn’t work out in the new role. The simple safeguard against that outcome, said Payne, is to state in the employment contract what the entitlements will be.
They’re “passive jobseekers” — people who are simply good at doing their job and happy doing it — but who may be interested in making a switch if the right offer came along.
A Toronto company thinks the way to reach this group is through their friends and co-workers. And to encourage the friend or co-worker to make the introduction, the company behind Bohire.com is posting cash rewards — right up there with “Job,” “Company” and “Location.”
The best hires are the ones made through a referral, said Vincent Tsang, vice-president of business development of Bohire. At a previous company he started, one-half of the staff who came through the door were referred by an employee, friend or member of the family.
“So we just thought, if direct referrals are the best way, why not build a community around it?” said Tsang.
Bohire.com is set up a little differently from most job boards. That’s because people don’t directly apply for a job posted on the site. They have to refer someone else — or just as likely have a friend refer them — and the person referred has to agree to have her resumé submitted.
There is no fee to post a vacancy. The employer sets whatever cash amount it thinks is fitting as a reward. Bohire earns 30 per cent of it and the referrer earns the remainder, which is the amount posted on the job board.
Employers only pay when they fill the vacancy and, as a guarantee the person referred is a quality hire, the cash reward is fully refundable during the first 30 days the person is on the job.
Internal referrals are good at putting an employer in touch with competent, trustworthy and hard-working people, and that’s because people will seldom bring a friend or relative into the workplace who will reflect badly on them.
Bohire referrers are not constrained by the same considerations. However, employers can rate referrers, so someone recommending a friend who’s completely not suited for the position will be marked poorly and lose credibility in his next referral.
Since Bohire was launched in January, it has attracted 150 employers that have posted 250 jobs on the site. The community of referrers, who have to be registered, numbered just under 1,100 at the end of last month.
Lindsay Ortega, recruitment specialist at Toronto-based law firm Miller Thomson, is a fan of the service. She has put up 15 postings and recently completed the hiring process for the fifth candidate found through Bohire.
Ortega was initially drawn to the service because she could post for free.
“At first, I wasn’t so sure what results to expect. But with the boom of social networking on the Internet, we started feeling positive about it very quickly,” she said.
Like most employers, Miller Thomson posts its openings in a variety of media, including trade publications, the careers page on the company website, internal job boards and online job boards.
The latter usually nets a glut of applications, “which you really have to sift through to see who’s qualified. It’s quite time-consuming,” said Ortega. The jobs she posts on Bohire give her only a few referrals each, but most of them are qualified for the job, she said.
Miller Thomson also uses search agencies but those can be costly. With the five hires Ortega has made through Bohire, the law firm has saved about 85 per cent of what it would have paid to find people through an agency, she said. For now, the law firm will continue using traditional recruiting methods, but it will likely review its strategy in the near future, said Ortega.
However, employers relying on cash rewards for referrals should be careful about how aggressively they recruit someone out of another job, cautioned Janice Payne, a senior partner at the Ottawa law firm Nelligan O’Brien Payne and leader of its employment practice group.
A few years ago Payne represented telecom marketer Mary Egan who successfully fought to have her severance pay brought up from 12 weeks to nine months. The argument Payne and Egan made in Egan v. Alcatel was Egan had been recruited out of a very secure, well-paying job that she had no intention to leave. She left her job of 20 years after two employees from Alcatel persuaded her to join the company. Unbeknownst to her, they shared an $8,000 reward offered through the company’s internal job referral program for their effort.
“The fact that money was paid as a reward mattered, but I don’t think her not knowing mattered,” said Payne. “It’s important to appreciate the importance of recruitment for severance packages. If the recruitment was aggressive and targeted, it’s going to be more important to the court. On the other hand, the longer the employee lasts with the new organization, the less important the recruitment.”
Employers using a service such as Bohire.com should be aware they may have to pay out bigger severance packages if the new hire leaves a good job and doesn’t work out in the new role. The simple safeguard against that outcome, said Payne, is to state in the employment contract what the entitlements will be.
