Referral Marketing

i am have been off vacationing and hence the huge time lag since my last post. I have been catching up on friends - many of whom i have not even emailed for years.

I was telling them about the Professional education company that i have launched - Oyster Learning. - http://www.oysterlearning.com/

Some of them were really excited and even gave me a lot of references of people who might be interested in working with me or would give me business!.

I marvelled at how references make such a huge impact in our lives.

A reference is almost like "giving away a part of your reputation" is what some guy said - i definitely believe in it and I think the hiring industry does so too...

Reference based hiring is a great way to hire for yourself good candidates.

Companies are well latched on to this concept and there are a variety of ways in which they have gone about it.

Employee Referral Schemes
The Referral scheme where in employees of an organisation refer friends and acquaintances whom they feel would fit potential roles in their organisation. Referring individuals are given a certain token money (in today's time - its pretty substantial - as high as 50k) if the referred candidate is selected.

The rider is only that the referred candidates should stay on for at least month - (or even 3 months - in BPOs)

Refer a Co - candidate

Companies have gone a step forward and have even come out with schemes where in candidates! can refer others and if the referred person is selected then they are given gift vouchers. Some times rewards are also given as a mere good will gesture to such persons - the aim being to keep them motivated enough to keep on sending references.

In one of my later posts ....i shall definitely talk about how one can do even more exciting stuff and what are the riders involved....