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In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date. In
by p1esk 4y ago
In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date.
In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k.
The first example was more successful from what I remember.
- elevanation 4y agoThat sounds like a good idea. I wonder what percentage of companies are offering substantial referral bonuses?
- web3-is-a-scam 4y agoAm I the only one that isn't incentivized by referral bonuses? The last thing I want is the blame for a bad hire because I somehow referred someone ended up not being a good fit for whatever reason.
- sfe22 4y agoWell, you get it after 90 days, by then they will probably know if it is a bad fit.
- noirbot 4y agoSure, but if it's a bad fit, it's still tied to you. Your team or some other team is now blaming you for their bad hire and you don't get the money.
- p1esk 4y agoI never felt like that when recommending someone. First of all, before referring someone, I'd personally interview them and make sure I want to work with them. And after that the candidate would still go through all the usual interview rounds (sans the initial recruiter's screen). The decision would still be collective - everyone on the team still has to write a review and give thumbs up.
- loa_in_ 4y agoAssuming that company wants best hires they are glad to give a go to anyone in the possible candidate pool sooner or later, and knowing anyone in same line of work (surely) is a positive bias to viability so they should thank you. What makes you feel like it's about blame?
- noirbot 4y agoBlame is maybe a too-strong word in some cases, but if someone gets hired onto my team and is a bit of a dud for whatever reason, and I know someone influential on another team referred them, it starts to feel more like nepotism than simply "using a referral network". Especially at a larger company where the hiring process can be a little obscured from the actual team. Where not every, or even most engineers on a team get to meet a new engineer before they're hired.
- loa_in_ 4y agoI think nepotism is a pathological case of something that happens just normally anyway. But then it's not nepotism... until it is... These systemic problems that are only tangential to actual work rarely occur but the common mitigations seem to put a lot of pressure on everyday man, maybe even more than the problem itself... I wonder what's the "correct" solution here.
- epicureanideal 4y agoUsually the amounts just aren’t enough to be worth the effort. A couple thousand, where a recruiter would get tens of thousands?
- ghaff 4y agoYeah. I won't refer people I don't really know and certainly not someone I do know and am not impressed by.
- atmosx 4y agoThe idea is to refer ppl you want to work with based on prior experience. I don't think they want you to on a wild goose chase on Github, StackOverflow or LinkedIn.
- roland35 4y agoOne unfortunate side effect of referral bonuses is that they don't really help increase diversity since employees are most likely to refer friends from their existing social circles. I didn't realize that at first!
- p1esk 4y agoI personally would prefer to work with people from my social circle.
- BeetleB 4y agoOf course you would. That is exactly the problem.
- p1esk 4y agoI am more productive (and generally happier) when working with people I like, and can relate to. Communication is better too, which is pretty important.
- atmosx 4y agoWhy is that a problem?
- BeetleB 4y agoImagine you keep applying for jobs and you get none because all the existing employees are recommending their friends who are inferior to you in skills, but the company is prioritizing referrals. This is, and has always been, a real problem: That your ability to get good positions is limited not by your skill set but by your ability to network.
- deadbeefinmoon 4y agoYou only need a laptop to set up a company in this field. If there are separate networks of different ethnities (or whatever you mean by diversity) their companies should be able to win over the ones who are not hiring based on pure skill and abilities. Does this happen?