Mumbai:  Employee referral is a key sourcing channel for hiring, which also helps in picking quality talents. Indian employers are much ahead of their global counterparts in leveraging referral programs for quality hiring. India leads usage of referral programs among major countries as 65% of employers in India utilize employee referrals, according to The India Recruiting Trends 2016 of LinkedIn.

In China only 32% employers use referral programs while in Australia and New Zealand 32% of counterparts use the same channel for talent sourcing. Globally 39% employers use referral tool as a hiring channel. While most countries don’t utilize their own employees for recruiting new hires, India is leveraging their employees extremely well. Strong relationships with employees and their networks helps organizations identify and source quality talent.

Digging into more on source of quality hires, the report mentioned that employee referral re-emerges as the top source of quality hires. Social professional networks continue to stay steady. Not only do talent leaders see employee referrals and social networks as top sources of quality hires, they also see them as long-lasting trends. Nearly 41% of surveyed recruiters say employee referrals are essential and long-lasting trend.

It is proved that referred employees have a longer tenure (Jobvite Index) and higher job performance (ERE). Hence, more HR leaders consider employee referrals are an essential tool to source quality talents. Further, Return on Investments (RoI) is comparatively high in referral channel.

The study was conducted among 298 Indian recruiters or talent acquisition decision makers who work in a corporate HR department and have some authority in their company’s recruitment solutions budget. These individuals focus exclusively on recruiting, manage a recruiting team, or are HR generalists.