I was recently talking to a friend and was amazed to hear the tale of her referral candidate and the hiring practice of her organization.

We have all heard the statistics about employee referrals and the value they bring to an organization. The last I heard was 54% of all hires are referrals. That being said and further to the article written by Simon Parkin that goes over the importance of a good employee referral program,... should these candidates not be handled differently then others, or better yet, should all candidates not be handled with the utmost sense of importance. Treat the candidate as if they add value to your process and they'll be engaged, trust me.

So there was an opening at "Jane's" company, within her group, and she recognized that "Bill" would be a great candidate for this role based on the fact the two of them had worked together before, and Bill had done a similar role with great success. I should note that Jane was heavily recruited away from the same company to work here at her current role. Jane brought this candidate to the attention of her boss, the Hiring Manager (HM), and even went a step further and invited Bill for lunch and introduced him to the hiring manager, his potential future boss. The two shook hands, exchanged pleasantries and talked a little around "fit", "value add" and "expectations". The Hiring manager was impressed and ready to take this to the next level,.....IN WALKS PROCESS!! I'm not saying that there is anything wrong process, in fact I applauded it for accountability reasons. What I am saying is,... do you have the right process?

HM called the Talent Management group and told them about Bill and asked what he needed to do. Talent Management said that in order for anyone to be hired, the need to go through the designed hiring process starting with the submission of the profile on the Applicant Tracking system. HM called Bill and said that he is interested, would like to proceed with the interview and the next step would be for Bill to fill out his profile on the company website.

A week pass so Bill decides to contact the recruiter assigned to the role, no answer so Bill leaves a voice message. The weekend comes and goes followed by a few more days, so Bill connects with the HM in an effort to understand the recruiting process. Later that day, a recruiter calls Bill and says that they are also looking at other candidates and will get back to him once they have established a list of candidates they want to proceed with.

Let's stop right here! How does Bill feel hearing that he is part of a cattle call? What does Bill think about the fact that it took a call to the HM to get any feedback? How is Jane going to feel upon hearing about the recruiting process, so far? I'm sure you can think of a few more, but we'll move forward these.

Another week and a half goes by (4 weeks from the initial meeting with the HM) and Bill receives a phone call from the recruiter requesting an interview. The interview is scheduled for 2 weeks later. Upon arriving in the interview room, Bill is watching the recruiter glance over his cv, as if to educate himself and prepare for the interview. As Bill put it, "the interview was a joke",.... "the recruiter had now idea of the role",..."the questions were not engaging",.."an overall waste of time". Wow! this is a referral?

Let's stop again. How can we measure the success of the process? This candidate is a tremendous asset to the organization and should be made to feel as such. Had the recruiter been prepared, the interview could have been structured around core competencies of the role and an understanding of basic skills that would make Bill successful. The HM can get down to the bare bones of the fit. As it is now, Bill is getting more frustrated and less interested.

Another week passes (6 1/2 weeks, 1 interview) and Bill phones the recruiter for next steps, to which he is pleased to hear that he is one of the finalists for the position and the group is just trying to organize the next interview. Bill is only curious about next steps because, although he is frustrated with the process, he is excited to be working along side of Jane again. Also Bill has just been contacted about another opportunity that looks quite interesting. It's important to note the characteristics of any candidate,... at this stage of his career, since Bill is engaged in an interview process, chances are he has made a mental decision to leave his present employer and is exploring his value on the "open market"

Another 2 weeks goes by (8 1/2 weeks) and Bill decides to call the HM and let him know that he is interviewing for another position and is going in for his third interview this week but does not want to accept anything without understanding what the future holds for him with this organization and the opportunity to work for that HM. Two days later, the recruiter calls Bill and informs Bill that they are going to schedule the final 2 interviews back to back in an effort to speed up the process. The meetings are 2 weeks later?

Let's stop again. This whole process was started because a Hiring Manager had a need for a top talent individual,...IMMMEDIATLEY! We are now 10 1/2 weeks removed from the initial meeting?

Bill is now in a favorable position, he has a series of meetings set for the same week and is expecting to receive multiple job offers. First meeting, job offer the next day. Second meeting, goes home with the offer. Our meeting, needed to ask what the next step was and was told that the group is going to make their decision over the next few days and will get back to him. Bill is beside himself and tells the HM that over the next week he is going to make a decision on his career with or without their offer. Three days go by and Bill receives a call that an offer is going to be sent out at the beginning of next week, or 12 weeks from the original meeting.

As you can imagine, Bill did not wait for the offer and took a role at a competitive organization and at the end of his first year, took his wife on an all expenses paid trip thanks to exceeding his sales targets for the year.

As For Jane, she told me that she will never go through that embarrassment again and is still in touch with Bill who is keeping his eyes open for a role in his company for her.

What is your Recruiting Strategy for reducing the Time to hire and how do you handle referrals?

For the future of my blogging,.... I plan on sharing these types of case studies with you as the "Candidate Experience"