Don’t get me wrong, I think employee referrals are a great recruiting tool for any organization. Your employee wouldn’t recommend someone for a job that they wouldn’t want to work with, right? But just because your star employee recommends someone does not mean that someone doesn’t have a checkered past. It could just mean that your employee either doesn’t know about it or is trying to help out a friend.
In the following article, the Head of HR for one of India’s top IT-BPO companies is quoted as saying that employee referrals are a great way to save on the time and cost of background screening. If you ask me, employee referrals are a great way to save on the time and cost of finding talent for your organization, but are no replacement for a background check. How do you know how long your employee has known the referred party? Three years, you say? Well then, let’s get this guy on the payroll! Let’s just hope that five years ago he wasn’t busted for assault with a deadly weapon and child endangering. And six years ago he wasn’t jailed for stealing from his former employer.
As much as we hope that the people our employees refer are always going to be top notch, that isn’t always going to be the case. And again, that may be no fault of your employee – maybe he or she just doesn’t know the person as well as they think they do. In any event, no alternative hiring tool can replace a background check. If you want to know who you are hiring, the screening process is absolutely vital.
Click here to read “Job Referrals: New Hiring Mantra”
