Why employee referrals are key in your job search

Many employers now have extensive employee referral programs in place.

Do you find yourself scrolling through several job search platforms on a daily basis, but hardly receive a positive response for your many job applications?

Despite extensively reading about the perfect way to draft your CV and cover letter and doing everything right, do you still find yourself not making enough progress as you would like? Then chances are that the problem lies not in what you put into your CV and other materials, but how you are approaching company profiles.

In this article, we look at the hidden job market in Germany and referrals as a way of landing your next job.

What is the hidden job market?

A large number of companies in Germany do not necessarily put out their vacancies publicly or on job-search platforms like LinkedIn and Xing. Instead, many employers prefer to fall back on their own existing professional network to help them find the perfect fit for the role on offer. This means that a considerable amount of job vacancies do not even make it to public platforms that you, as a job seeker, frequent on a regular basis.

Companies across the world - and in Germany - now have employee referral programs in place. These are organized and structured programs dedicated to finding the next best candidate for the company. And what better way to do this than to rely on their most valuable assets - their current employees. For some companies, this is even their most used and trusted way of hiring promising talent.

Through employee referral programs, companies can effectively find a suitable candidate through their own internal network with the help of their employees, who have already proved that they identify with the goals and missions of the company.

Why do companies have referral programs?

Employee referral programs are beneficial for companies for a variety of reasons. They are:

1 - High quality of candidates

When the company's own employees are involved in the process, it helps increase the quality of the referred candidates to a great extent. Think about it, if you were in a position to refer someone from your network for a prospective position in your firm, you would only do so if you trust the capabilities of your contact. This is exactly why many companies place trust in this mode of hiring.

2 - Save time

When going through the employee referral programs, what companies are essentially doing is to considerably reduce the time they spend searching for candidates and screening them. This way, the hiring managers can save time since the initial screening process is already taken care of and only serious candidates will come through referrals.

3 - Reduce cost

Companies now do not have to hire recruiters and rely on them to find the right candidate. Additional costs like this can be avoided by completely relying on their internal network to fill the desired role.

This is why it is important to start building a professional network on LinkedIn early on in your studies or career, so that you can invest time in building contacts that will eventually help you in your work life. Looking up professionals who work in your field and connecting with them on LinkedIn can be the first step towards building a professional relationship, so that you can rely on people in your network to help you with employee referrals when need be.