What Using/misusing employee referral policy has taught me.

So.. Around 2 years back I got my first payout of 50k as a referral bonus for a friend I referred to my company.

Around same time.. My team had a few positions.. So i put it on linkedin and got a decent response.. Got another referral..

Next year.. I decided to scale it.. I started putting multiple posts on linkedin for positions across my company and started streaming the responses on google sheet. Having a big linkedin network of 20k helped.

This year I scaled it to 4L a year... But then it all stopped after one fine day there was a HR circular to not undertake commercial level sourcing of profiles on linkedin.. And only refer ppl I know.

It's a different matter that I could manage to source almost 20-40x more relevant profiles as compared to my HRs even with their third party agencies. More than half of my team members are my referrals :).

While scaling this hustle.. This is what I learnt.

1. You will get lots of spam.. I feel sry for some candidates .. But sometime even civil grads will apply for semiconductor jobs.

2. Better to invite applications using a google form with proper filters.. Only serious ppl will apply.

3. Do not refer everyone.. Reduce your effort and only refer candidates who have a chance.

4. Engage with candidates, followup after interviews.

5. Do not trust your employer will automatically honor referral payouts if you don't track.. I literally lost more than 2L coz of inefficient referral tracking system.

6. Control your greed.. Even if you scale up.. Limit yourself to a decent no.. Say 2L a year.. Referral policy is for company's benifit.. They will shut you down one way or another if they find you are gaining.

7. Handling it at scale is a lot of work.