My column this month on Fast Company/Inc's Hiring center is Breathing Life into Your Employee Referral Program. You can't leave comments there, but please do leave comments here.
If you have a working and useful employee referral program, please do comment, especially if you take other actions than the ones I suggested. Most of the employee referral programs I see are “too little too late” for employees to take the time and deal with the paperwork. It's too bad, because your employees can be a fantastic source of hires.
I’ve had a lot of success with the referal program at my work. The payout makes it worth it.
The most frustrating thing is getting quick and easy access to the open positions. But it’s easy to “manually” figure them out.
I’ve also written up some notes on the finer details of “grassroots recruitment” on my weblog.