Using Refer a Friend: how to refer a job or a person (and what the candidate sees)

This article explains how a referral is made through the Refer a Friend form on your Refari job board: the two ways a referrer can use it, how a job referral is tracked, and what the person on the receiving end sees. A referral is simply a recommendation, someone telling you about a person who could suit one of your roles, and the person making it is the referrer.

Where the Refer a Friend option appears

Your job board, and every individual job on it, carries a Refer a Friend button. Anyone browsing your board, whether an employee, a candidate or a member of the public, can use it. Whatever they send, Refari turns into a branded, trackable link, so the referral is always credited to the right referrer automatically.

Note: When you are signed in as a recruiter, you will not see the Refer a Friend button on your own board. It is shown to the public and to your referrers, not to your logged-in team.

The two ways to refer

When someone clicks Refer a Friend, the form offers them two choices. Both are tracked and both credit the referrer; they simply suit different situations.

1. Refer this job to someone

This is a job referral. The referrer points a specific job at a person they think would be a good fit. Refari creates a branded link to that job that is unique to the referrer. If the person opens the link and applies for the job, the application is automatically attributed to the referrer, with no need for anyone to log it by hand. That is what makes a job referral trackable: the credit, and any reward, follows the link.

2. Refer a person to the company

This is a direct recommendation. Instead of pointing someone at one particular job, the referrer passes the person's details to the company so your team can consider them for anything suitable. The recommendation is still recorded against the referrer, so they are credited if it leads to a hire, even though it was not tied to a single job.

Sending a job referral

Here is the job-referral flow from start to finish. After choosing Refer this job, the referrer picks how they want to share it. Refari offers a range of channels, so they can use whichever suits the person they have in mind.

They then choose their contact and add a short message if they want (in this example it has been left as a simple note), and send.

The person receives the message with the referrer's branded link. In this example it has been shared as a social-media direct message, but email, SMS, messaging apps and the other available channels all work the same way.

What the candidate sees

When the person opens the branded link, they land on the job, with a couple of differences from the way you would normally see it.

Straight away, Refari asks them how relevant the referral is, on the right-hand side. They can answer now, or choose Continue Reading and decide later, which offers a Not sure yet option.

Once they have read the role and rated how relevant it is to them (here, four stars), that rating is saved. The relevance rating is useful to you too: it feeds into the referrer's track record over time, which you can see in your Referrers list.

The relevance question is then replaced by the Apply for this job section, so the person can apply right there. Because they arrived through the branded link, their application is credited back to the referrer automatically.

Idea: Because the branded link works across so many channels, encourage your referrers to share it wherever their network already is, by email, messaging apps or social media. The easier it is to send, the more referrals you receive.

Other articles you might be interested in:  How to create a direct link to the refer a friend popup  |  What is a Referrer?