Social referral programs present one of the best opportunities for recruiters to grow their contractor base, and "micro-rewards" for referrals are one of the most effective means of generating and maintaining contractor interest, says UK recruitment trainer Bill Boorman.

Such programs facilitate access to a wealth of searchable information and people in existing contractors' networks, and are now the primary way for recruitment companies to access new contractors, Boorman told an ITCRA webinar today.

Using the wrong incentives in these programs can, however, curtail their usefulness by failing to encourage enough referrals, said Boorman.

"What we're really looking at rewarding from a social referral point of view is the art of referral – the act of making the referral."

In order to make this viable, recruiters can offer "micro-rewards" for each referral. Boorman said one of the most effective techniques for this is gamification, which might involve offering contractors a raffle ticket per referral that places them into a monthly prize draw, for example.

"For contractors it really helps if you do something like throw a referral party. Say 'Right okay, once you've made five referrals you get a ticket to the party'. Contractors love beer. They've very little opportunity to socially mix so you can create that," he said.

The referral process itself should be as easy as possible for contractors, which is where technology, such as RolePoint, can lend a hand, added Boorman.

Another useful incentive to encourage contractor referrals is credits for training programs, which can also have a positive effect on retention, he said.

"As the contractor base and freelance base is growing, companies are investing less and less in training and developing new skills. The real opportunity in terms of retention and retaining your contractor base... is looking at investment in development," he said.

"We've got some real opportunities now in looking at online training and getting involved in what they call MOOCS – Massive Open Online Courses – which gives you access to a lot of resources and development... [that] can be task-specific [or] which you can use as rewards for retention."

Search for conversations, not profiles or key words

An additional challenge recruiters face when trying to grow their contractor base is the over-mining of traditional sourcing grounds, such as LinkedIn, which is forcing contractors into hiding online, said Boorman.

Over the last five years, more data has been created than at any other time in history, however recruiters need to look in unique places to find this data because much of it is unstructured, he said.

"The first social network was created 17 years ago, which was called Six Degrees. From 17 years ago, people have been leaving clues and footprints as to who they are and where they are.

"The challenge is how do you find people and how do you connect with people? This begins with the way in which you search, the way in which you look at the internet, particularly when interrogating unstructured data. That means not searching for key words or profiles," he said, echoing recent comments from BraveNewTalent strategy director Master Burnett.

Recruiters should instead be looking for "geek words or geek phrases" to help identify conversations between people in the same field as the contractors they're trying to source, said Boorman.

"If you're in a bar and you overhear three people or four people talking, there's going to be certain words or phrases which are going to be exchanged that will help you immediately identify that they work within the same profession as you," he said.

Every discipline has these geek words, and now that these conversation have moved online, recruiters can use tools, such as Facebook Graph Search, to find and join them, said Boorman.

"The key here is going to be relationships rather than transactions, which is built around intentional networking. So daily networking or searching for people – not for clients or contractors – but... for people who are in your space who can connect with you, and finding ways to reach out and make a first introduction."

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