At the HR Tech conference in Las Vegas, Patti Tabris, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at ResultsCX, shared the success of their referral program, **ReferCX**, which generated over 400,000 referrals in two years. The program, accounting for 25-30% of hires, improves candidate quality, reduces costs, and strengthens company culture.
Key features include tiered incentives tied to retention, leaderboards for engagement, and a mobile app for seamless onboarding. With plans to expand into external referrals and gamification, ReferCX demonstrates how innovation and employee engagement can transform referrals into a powerful recruitment tool.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Podcast Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel: All right, let's do this. We are live from the Smart Recruiters booth at HR Tech in lovely Las Vegas. He's Chad, I'm Cheese, and we are here with Patti Tabris, Senior Director of TA, talking about referrals. But Patti, before we get into that, give us a little elevator pitch about you.
Patti Tabris: Okay, I've been in recruiting. Actually, I started my career as a finance person, worked for one of the big accounting firms for about five years, and then moved over into recruiting in a variety of different ways. All my jobs, I got through some sort of a referral, whether it was somebody referring me to the company or somebody telling me about the company.
Joel: Rumor has it that's the most effective way to recruit, is that word of mouth referrals.
Chad: Either number one or number two, yes, generally.
Patti Tabris: It's definitely up there.
Joel: So you've presented here at HR Tech about referrals. Set the table for what you talked about, and we can dig in.
Patti Tabris: Okay, so I'm in charge of all our talent acquisition technology for a company that's... We're about 20,000 employees. We're a customer experience company. We're in nine countries, and we work with...
Joel: Do you wanna name the company?
Patti Tabris: It's called ResultsCX.
Joel: Okay, yeah.
Patti Tabris: And we also have a very high volume hiring because we have seasonal workers, we have ramp. Most of our positions are on the associate level, and so we're really hiring people. We have ramps that we have to hire hundreds of people in a week. So we're always looking at our sourcing and how we get those candidates in. So we're using a platform called ERIN for our employee referrals. We've been with them... We're in our third year with them, and I was invited here to talk about the fact that we have over 400,000 referrals from our employees in the last two years.
Chad: How many employees do you have?
Patti Tabris: About 20,000 employees.
Chad: 20,000 and how many?
Patti Tabris: 400,000.
Chad: 20,000 to 400,000, okay, so how? We'll get into that in a minute. Most companies automatically see that one of their either number one or number two source of hire is employee referrals, and they literally, they don't think anything's broke, so don't fix it, so they don't even think or want or even think they need to spend money on a referral platform, but you did, why?
Patti Tabris: Well, it wasn't just me, it was our TA leadership, and they... So we just were looking at how can we improve? How can we do better? My team is the Talent Acquisition Innovation Team. One thing I love about ResultsCX is the fact that they aren't afraid to look and say, "Let's make improvements." So many companies stagnate. I've been there six years, and that's why I'm still there, is because we can keep solving problems, and every company has things that need to be fixed, so.
Chad: So the company is customer experience.
Patti Tabris: Yes.
Chad: Does that give you kind of like a superpower because it's like customer experience, the candidate experience, right?
Patti Tabris: A hundred percent.
Chad: So is that how you like sell into it and say, "Look, we can do better," because they're constantly telling their clients, your clients, we can do better.
Patti Tabris: Exactly. And having that support really helps us constantly look for better ways...
Chad: That's awesome.
Patti Tabris: To support our candidates that are coming through the candidate journey, but also supporting our team members in TA, our talent scouts, the people that are in-charge of sourcing and interviewing these candidates. So what we did is a couple years ago, we weren't just looking at the employee referrals, we were looking at all of our sourcing and what the tools are that we were using and how we can improve them and where we could get the best ROI from the improvement.
Patti Tabris: Employee referrals, when we started digging in and looking at it and researching, and talking to other companies, finding out what they've done, if you could scale your employee referral program, you can not only save cost, save time, you can also bring in better candidates, you can change your retention numbers. Our company, I find fascinating, we have people with us that have been there for 25 years. They've started as one of our associates working on some of our campaigns and have become directors in the company, VPs. It's really... We give candidates an ability to move throughout the company. So if we could get them to stay and get them onboarded, get them to stay, we have long-term employees.
Joel: Okay, let's take the lid off of this thing. Let's look into the secret sauce. There are tons of referral programs. What did you do differently? What does your technology do differently? I'm sure you've used a variety of different technologies. What was it?
Patti Tabris: I think it's important to know what your goals are. And people... Different companies might have different goals about their plan based on their type of hiring. We do hire corporate-type employees, but that's not the bulk of what we do. 90 to 95% of our hiring are our associates, so we have... Which tends to be a high turnover. So what we really wanted to look at was retaining employees. Some stats that we found were, if we could have an employee stay with us for 30 days, that means that they're gonna be at least 30% longer-term employee. And if we get them to stay for 90 days, that even makes it better for us to have a long-term employee. That's what every company wants. You want to keep your good employees.
Joel: So what are you doing to keep them there? And how does that tie into the referral program?
Patti Tabris: So I think the referral program, one of our pieces of it is that we wanted to build the company culture with it as well. Every company spends money on job boards, on all these different other things that bring in candidates. Why not give some of that back to your employees? And make them a part of it, make them an ambassador for your company. I think one of the things that made us incredibly successful with our program was we didn't keep it just with TA. We really got our marketing team involved.
Patti Tabris: We did multi-tier marketing when we were rolling out the new plan. To be able to do all that, it's choosing the right vendor also, and the right partner. Because a lot of the... When you talk about employee referral vendors that are out there in the marketplace, people help you with the front end. But if you're gonna scale your employee referral plan, you really need to have a strong back end that does all those calculations of the bonuses. Because having 400,000 candidates come in...
Chad: Geez.
Patti Tabris: And then you go down a funnel because the candidates that come in have to accept the referral. And be interested in the job. Based on that, you have to... They go throughout the same application process, the same screening process that any other candidate would. But we know that they're stronger candidates, typically. It's been proven. So we wound up having 10, almost 11,000 hires from that 400,000 in the funnel. Which may not seem like a lot but that's...
Chad: That's a lot of hires.
Patti Tabris: That's a good percentage.
Chad: So 400,000 referrals.
Patti Tabris: We had about 300,000 that accepted the referral.
Chad: Okay. Oh, wow.
Patti Tabris: Yeah. And then now also sometimes they may not be the fit for that job.
Chad: Sure. Sure.
Patti Tabris: Or they may not be the fit for...
Chad: Are you matching against other jobs or pool?
Patti Tabris: Company at that time. We do match against our candidates. We always look for where they're the best fit in the company.
Chad: Nice. Nice.
Patti Tabris: Not just for that one job, but it also gives us a candidate pool that if they're not the right fit today, maybe they'll be the right fit in six months or a year. So we look at it from our TA standpoint as a holistic view of TA, not just immediate fill of a job.
Chad: Yeah.
Patti Tabris: And what we can do to build that pipeline. So your employee referral program gives you more than just that immediate influx of candidates.
Chad: So with what we've heard over the years, especially on the compliance side of the house, is that referrals don't really drive into diversity because you're just hiring pretty much friends of Bob. Right? What does friends of Bob look like? It looks like another Bob. Right?
Patti Tabris: Right. But if you have a diverse workforce.
Chad: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Patti Tabris: And we have... We put a lot of effort into into having a diverse workforce.
Chad: So it just amplifies it. That's awesome.
Patti Tabris: It's amplifying your diversity, which is wonderful and that's what you want.
Chad: Yeah.
Patti Tabris: And so I think it's really a lot about the company culture as well that drives it, and not believe that that came through in our program. I think it's really important for anybody putting a program together to make sure they have clear goals of what they're doing, track those goals, and be able to show the ROI event.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Let's talk about incentives real quick. I'm guessing we're not talking Applebee's gift cards that you're given.
[laughter]
Patti Tabris: No, no.
Joel: Is it escalated payouts? Talk about the incentives.
Patti Tabris: So we did a four tier incentive plan, and so 30 days after some of referrals hired, the person that referred them receives a fourth of the payout. That is for their region. It's done by region. And then there's three more payouts the next 30, 60, 90 days. So what that does help, it not only incentivizes, it incentivizes both the referrer and the referral to stay with the company and give it that shot for that 90 days, 120 days, which is what we were looking for.
Chad: And there's also that tie, right? Because you have that personal tie.
Patti Tabris: Yeah.
Chad: Which literally it helps from a retention standpoint.
Patti Tabris: Yeah. Yep.
Chad: Because again, so and so Joel brought me in, I don't wanna make Joel look bad.
[laughter]
Joel: Every time we push record you make me look bad.
Chad: I do. My damnedest.
Joel: Tell me about gamification is very hot right now, getting badges or I have some sort of a competition within the company of who's doing better. Is that part of your...
Patti Tabris: We have a leaderboard.
Joel: Okay. Leaderboard.
Patti Tabris: Gamification is available to us, and that's something we're working on currently. But we do have a leaderboard. We post... And when we rolled out the program, we did a lot of those types of things, wanted to make sure that we got people involved in the program.
Chad: Yeah.
Patti Tabris: We recognize who's the highest referrer, who has the most people that were hired through them. So we do make announcements and some of it is just a recognition. It doesn't have to be prizes. They're getting their bonus, they're getting that in their paycheck, their referral bonus. So we focus more on the recognition, and I think that that's not a bad thing that really helps people feel good about what they're doing. Another big thing I think that's important for anybody that's looking to do a referral program is make sure that you make it part of your new hire orientation so that every new hire coming in the company knows all about it.
Chad: Yeah.
Patti Tabris: Give them the information, let them become your sourcing person from day one. And they could start earning cash and money while they're still in training. Like, it's really exciting. We did a lot of marketing. Marketing's key. Let everybody make sure everybody knows.
Joel: Say more about that marketing.
Patti Tabris: So we had a QR code. We did...
Chad: Your favorite.
Patti Tabris: A tickler campaign.
Chad: That's my favorite.
Patti Tabris: Pushing out. Something's coming.
Chad: That's my favorite. Tickler.
Patti Tabris: So we branded... [laughter] We branded our program as ReferCX, and it's a mobile app.
Chad: Oh, that's awesome.
Patti Tabris: They could go right on their phones. And that was part of what ERIN offered us.
Chad: Okay.
Patti Tabris: When we decided to go with Erin as our vendor.
Chad: You're branding it yourself. Oh, that's awesome. That's great.
Patti Tabris: Branding it for the company.
Chad: Yeah.
Patti Tabris: And Making them feel like they're a part of something companywide. It's on their phone, they could click in there and make a referral from anywhere. If they're standing in Starbucks and they're talking to somebody in line and they think they're a great fit for our company, send them a referral notice, talk them into applying. It's a great way to have people get excited about their job and their company. So something I'd love to throw out there that...
Chad: Sure.
Patti Tabris: Isn't everybody's looking for the muddy savings, the time savings, all of that. But what we found is the company culture and what it added to our company culture is really exciting as well. Since we set up our referral program with ERIN, we've won four Great Place to work, five great place to work badges this past year.
Chad: Wow.
Patti Tabris: And I think that has to have something to do with it.
Joel: I imagine it does.
Chad: Hell yeah.
Joel: I Imagine it does.
Patti Tabris: They feel rewarded, they feel excited about the company.
Joel: So you got warm and fuzzy on us there for a second.
Patti Tabris: Yeah.
Joel: You mentioned money. I want to get cold and hard on you real quick.
Chad: Oh don't that.
Joel: You're using a lot. You're advertising jobs, you're... I mean, I don't know all the things that you're doing, but how does the dollars and cents add up versus all the other things that you're doing with referrals?
Patti Tabris: So when you say add up, what do you mean?
Joel: So you're posting jobs.
Chad: Your focus is advertising.
Joel: You're budgeting for all these different things.
Patti Tabris: Yes.
Joel: Where does referrals come in on a cost per applicant or cost per hire basis?
Patti Tabris: I could tell you that it's between 25 and 30% of our hires are through referrals.
Joel: Is your budget that same amount?
Patti Tabris: Yes. Using a system like ERIN, we have the ability to stop the referral program in any time and in any country. So because we're in a variety of countries, that means the amount might be different because of the difference from US dollars to Philippine pesos. So we try to keep it equitable on a cost-of-living standing. But we can turn... If the Philippines fills up and is at their budget cap, we can turn them off, still run it in the US, Mexico, Honduras, Bulgaria, some of the other areas that we're in. So I think that's of an important factor of growing your plan is having the right technology behind it to be able to manage all those calculations. That was one of the reasons we looked for a program to run it on is because it was being done manually before that, like calculating all that.
Joel: Oh stop it.
Patti Tabris: Yeah.
Joel: Don't say spreadsheet.
Patti Tabris: Yeah, spreadsheet.
Joel: God.
Chad: Referrals around the world.
Joel: I hear they're hot.
Patti Tabris: That's typically how they're being done.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: I mean taxes, we haven't even talked about taxes.
Patti Tabris: Well, payroll handles that.
Joel: Payroll manages all that.
Chad: Yeah. It ain't broke so don't fix it.
Joel: So we're headed into 2025, anything that you're going to be adding, looking to expand?
Patti Tabris: We're looking at the gamification. They have another avenue that is external referrals, not just employee referrals. I've just started talking with them about that. And really for us, the program's running really well. We will analyze it, we'll look at... We do surveys of the employees to see what they think of it. We're in the process right now of doing employee surveys, our annual surveys.
Joel: Is that a separate technology?
Patti Tabris: Yeah.
Joel: The survey. So talk about that, the constant engagement is surveys. Are you doing that now?
Patti Tabris: No.
Joel: Or are you looking to do that in the future?
Patti Tabris: We do an annual employee survey globally through our HR team. I can't really talk that much to that because it's not mine.
Joel: Is that enough? 'Cause I hear the kids need that constant engagement. Is that what you're looking to do going forward?
Patti Tabris: What we do is we just do a temperature check, talk to them, talk to our employees, find out what they like about it. The platform comes with robust reporting so we can always see who our higher referrers are, talk to them about what they think of the program. And just looking at the data. I think that was key for us too, is getting all that data in one place, being able to report on it, being able to see it on an ongoing basis so you can make the best decisions and give your employees the best program.
Chad: Well, Joel, you gotta check in with the kids.
Patti Tabris: You do.
Chad: You gotta check in with the kids.
Joel: She's talking a lot of common sense to us right now.
Patti Tabris: That's because I'm older than you guys probably.
Chad: I doubt it. I doubt it.
Joel: I don't know about that.
Chad: Patti, if somebody wants to learn a little common sense from you, where would you actually send them or where can they link up with you?
Patti Tabris: On LinkedIn. Patti Tabris at ResultsCX. I'm on LinkedIn.
Chad: Beautiful.
Patti Tabris: And I love to connect. I've learned so much from others. I'm always open to having a conversation and helping other people out.
Chad: People are now learning from you.
Patti Tabris: Oh, I hope so.
Chad: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Patti Tabris: Thank you.
Joel: All right Patti, thanks for hanging out. Full disclosure, ERIN is a sponsor of the Chad and Cheese podcast, providing our lovely shirts.
Chad: Soft t-shirts.
Joel: Which by the way, chadcheese.com forward/free if you haven't done that yet.
Chad: Get a free t-shirt.
Joel: That is another one in the book and I think our last HR Tech interview.
Chad: Wow.
Patti Tabris: Wow.
Joel: Congratulations, Patti, for...
Patti Tabris: Wow, I'm wrapping up the show.
Joel: Ending right at the end of the URL. And With that, Chad, we out.
Chad: We out.
Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast with Chad, with Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening, it's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.
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