Referring a friend to a new job may sound easy enough, but some referrals are more effective than others. Sure, you could just forward a resume and maybe include a nice note endorsing your friend, but what else can you do to give your friend the best shot at getting the job? These four steps will help you to help your friend, and if you’re looking for work yourself, consider forwarding this to friends who want to help you!
Know What Your Friend Has Accomplished and What They Want to Accomplish
You know that your friend wants a job, but is there a department or job they are specifically targeting? What are your friends’ big career accomplishments that you can use to pre-sell them to your contacts within the company? Knowing more about your friend’s goals will help you better present them to management, and allow you to know which jobs you should push them towards.
Find the Right Person in Your Company to Talk To
To ensure that your friend’s resume doesn’t just end up in a pile of candidates somewhere, take the time to find the right person in your company to refer them to. Maybe you eat lunch with someone in HR, or a hiring manager that would be receptive to your pitch? How about a department head that you know well, or a manager that you know is looking to grow their team? Stay away from situations where the resume will be put through the same process as every other candidate (including the dreaded ATS). Instead, look for opportunities where you can present your friend at the beginning of a process, or even before it “officially” opens. Also, make sure that you either hand your connection the resume, or send it to their personal email address. No matter how well-intentioned their interests might be, sending it to general email addresses may get it lost in the crowd.
Follow-Up with Both Sides after the Interview
In some situations the hiring manager may seek you out to tell you how great your friend was and to thank you for saving them weeks of resumes and interviews. In the other cases, though, you may need to follow up with both the hiring manager and the candidate to see how it went. Just because you didn’t immediately hear back does not mean that the interview didn’t go well. People are busy and they may not have had a chance to talk to you. Getting feedback from both parties will allow you to get an idea of a next step. If your friend did not get hired, does the hiring manager think they may be a fit for another job in another department, and does the friend even want to proceed to another opportunity within the company?
Refer Your Friends to a Staffing Company like AppleOne
If you have a great friend looking for work and know a Hiring Advisor at AppleOne, you can do your friend and your AppleOne contact a huge favor by making an introduction. AppleOne has connections to companies that are looking to hire immediately, and by hooking your friend up with a Hiring Advisor, they will get an additional, powerful resource for their job search.
AppleOne Blog 
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