XING ReferralManager turns employees into headhunters

Automated employee referrals: XING ReferralManager identifies potential new colleagues among employee contact networksSwisscom: “The XING ReferralManager helps us find candidates who match our vacancies and were recommended by our own staff.”Forsa: Employees can earn over 1,500 euros on average for a successful referral Hamburg, 13 October 2016 – A lack of skilled workers is putting employers under considerable pressure with two-thirds (65 per cent) of every German company surveyed stating that they have difficulties in filling their vacancies. Almost every third company (31 per cent) needs six months or more to hire someone for an opening. These are the results of a recent Forsa study involving 152 HR decision-makers at German companies with over 200 employees carried out on behalf of online business network XING. A company’s own employees are increasingly playing a key role when it comes to new hires as they actively promote the company they work for among their friends and acquaintances. Most companies still generally use manual processes that are often complex and time-consuming for both recruiters and staff alike. The new XING ReferralManager alleviates this complex situation by offering a digitalised solution. The online program will be presented for the first time ever at Germany’s largest HR trade fair, Zukunft Personal, in Cologne between 18 and 20 October. Automated employee referrals: XING ReferralManager identifies potential new colleagues among employee contact networks Despite the fact that 77 per cent of the companies surveyed set great store on their employees actively promoting their current vacancies among friends and acquaintances, only every fourth (25 per cent) HR department surveyed has a fixed process in place to manage such referrals. Filling in Excel sheets, Word files and the like is extremely inefficient and time-consuming for both employees and HR departments. The leading online business network in German-speaking countries now offers a solution, the XING ReferralManager, which accelerates and automates this process by using an intelligent algorithm to identify potential candidates for vacancies from among employee contact networks. Employees can then get in touch with identified persons directly or share job ads in a more widespread manner on social networks. The XING ReferralManager is the next generation of the eqipia program XING AG acquired in spring 2016. XING CEO Thomas Vollmoeller said: “Employee referrals reign supreme when it comes to recruiting. No other method is more personal, direct or credible as employees act as ambassadors for the company where they work. Finding and approaching potential candidates can now take place in an automated fashion via the XING ReferralManager, thus reducing the amount of time and effort required by HR departments.” Swisscom: “The XING ReferralManager helps us find candidates who match our vacancies and were recommended by our own staff.” Swisscom, the leading Swiss IT and communications provider, already used the eqipia program in the past and now uses the XING ReferralManager for its recruiting activities. Dr. Hans C. Werner, Chief Personal Officer at Swisscom, said: “The XING ReferralManager helps us find candidates who match our vacancies and were recommended by our own staff. This combination is what makes the ReferralManager so appealing – on the one hand, the program uses data to determine the best people in terms of expertise, while on the other hand, it’s still up to employees to decide whether they think those people would make good Swisscom colleagues.”  Forsa: Employees can earn over 1,500 euros on average for a successful referral The XING ReferralManager is a powerful performance measurement tool that lets recruiters see how many contacted people have shared their company’s job ads and via which channel(s). Recruiters can also see how often a shared job ad was actually opened. The XING ReferralManager can also be linked to existing candidate management systems so that referral fees can be managed directly via the program. Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of companies that accept referrals offer their amateur headhunters a referral fee. This is usually a monetary incentive with 1,500 euros being the average amount paid out to employees for each successful hire. According to the Forsa study, some companies award fees in the form of prizes, while others give employees additional days off. Experience shows that it’s not uncommon for businesses with an acute need for skilled workers, e.g. IT companies, to pay referral fees of up to 5,000 euros. The XING ReferralManager will be presented to the public for the first time ever at Germany’s largest HR trade fair, Zukunft Personal, in Cologne between 18 and 20 October. The program will be available to companies of all sizes and from every industry. XING ReferralManager licence fees are based on the number of employees working for a company and start at 400 euros per month. XING E-Recruiting GmbH & Co. KG provides further details in its product overview (https://recruiting.xing.com/en/e-recruiting-solutions/referralmanager/). Market research institute Forsa surveyed 152 HR decision-makers at companies in Germany with over 200 employees between 21 September and 4 October. About XING The leading online business network in German-speaking countries supports its members in mastering the transformations taking place in the world of work. XING helps its nearly 11 million members to balance their professional and private life as well as possible within an environment defined by a lack of skilled workers, digitalisation and changing values. To this end, members can visit XING Jobs to look for vacancies that appeal to them, stay up to date with news offers by XING, or browse the German-language portal XING spielraum to find out about the trends and changes taking place in the new world of work. At the start of 2015, XING added Jobbörse.com, the largest jobs search engine in German-speaking countries, to its portfolio. Before that, XING had acquired kununu, which as the principal employer review platform in German-speaking countries served to strengthen XING’s leading position within the field of social recruiting. XING was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003, has been publicly listed since 2006, and listed on the TecDAX since September 2011. Members can meet and exchange views in around 80,000 groups, while also getting together at more than 150,000 business-related events every year. XING has more than 900 employees at offices in Hamburg, Munich, Aschaffenburg, Barcelona and Vienna. Visit www.xing.com for more information.