How to Leverage Employee Referrals to Increase Hiring Event Attendance

Job fairs are excellent opportunities for employers to connect with great candidates. However, attracting a strong turnout can sometimes be challenging. One hugely effective strategy to boost job fair attendance is leveraging the power of employee referrals. In this blog post, we will outline the steps to do so: 

1. Inform Your Employees About Upcoming Job Fairs 

Ensure that your employees are aware of the job fairs your organization will be attending or hosting. Send out a message via email, text, company newsletters, or internal communication channels. Provide details about the event and specific job roles or departments being targeted.

2. Connect Employee Referrals to Job Fairs

This is the most important step of this strategy. Inform employees that any candidate they refer, who then shows up to the job fair and eventually gets hired will be counted as their referral –  which will result in the employee receiving an employee referral bonus. This will strongly encourage your employees to refer candidates and spread the word about your job fair. 

3. Set Up the Right Tracking

In order to be able to track the candidates who were referred, attended the job fair, and ended up applying via your ATS, you’ll need the right employee referral tracking solution. If your employee referral tracking is still done manually, this will be hard to manage. See how Eqo can help here.  

4. Recognize those Who Shared the Word

At the job fair, ask candidates how they heard about it and note down the name of any employees who referred them. Next day, give those employees a recognition post by email, text or via your internal messaging platform. You can even go further and send them a small gift. i.e $20 Amazon Gift Card. 

5. Engage Referrals who Didn’t Attend

Even if referred candidates don't attend, now you have their information. Engage them after the job fair, give them the opportunity to speak to a recruiter, and add them to your recruitment marketing list for any future job fairs. 

Employee referrals can be a game-changer when it comes to boosting job fair attendance. By leveraging the existing network and enthusiasm of your employees, you can attract a larger pool of qualified candidates to your job fairs. Encourage active employee participation, provide incentives, and create a supportive referral culture.