From Personal Recommendation to Team Approval

Like recruiting portals, employee recommendations are a powerful source of potential candidates everywhere AsstrA operates. In June 2021, the AsstrA HR department launched the Refer a Friend referral program to help continue growing the company’s team of professionals.

Through referral recruitment, companies search for personnel based on recommendations from current employees. This approach is effective in specialized industries with close-knit networks of professionals who recommend each other. The goal of a referral program is to create an additional stream of promising candidates and strengthen the company's brand as an employer. Recommendation-based recruiting reduces search time, improves the quality of recruiting, increases employee engagement, and increases the number of newcomers who pass their initial trial periods.

In referral recruiting, referrers recommend potential candidates, aka referrals. Any AsstrA employee can be a referrer, except for someone who is able to make the final hiring decision for a given vacancy (e.g. the head of a department, a branch manager, a project manager, etc.).

The Refer a Friend program functions as follows: HR managers communicate open vacancies across the company and encourage current employees to recommend their future colleagues. If a referral successfully passes his or her probationary period and becomes a full-fledged team member, the referrer will be receive thanks as well as a material reward.  As a rule, referrers should not take their role lightly; they are vouching for their referrals’ professionalism.

“The goal of referral recruiting is to bring in loyal and motivated employees who quickly adapt to their new roles thanks to existing acquaintances and relevant experience. Since the launch of our referral program, 14 people have started working at AsstrA as a result. After receiving a recommendation, we call the potential candidate to begin the recruitment process. An applicant meeting the necessary requirements will be introduced to his or her future manager and, if all goes well, the referrer will receive the agreed upon bonus. Referrals who were not a good fit at that time will be kept in our database and informed of new vacancies that may be of interest in the future,”  says Julia Malezhyk, AsstrA HR Manager.