The Top 10 Employee Referral Software Solutions

Welcome to Top 10, Recruiter.com's weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned.

This Week: Top 10 Employee Referral Software Solutions

Referrals are the best way to hire, hands down. Referred candidates take less time to hire (29 days as opposed to 39 for candidates hired through job posts and 55 days for candidates hired through career sites). They tend get up to speed more quickly than outside hires do, and they're 13 percent more likely to stick around for the long term. Overall, referred candidates are also more productive and happier at work than their non-referred counterparts.

But referrals don't just happen. You need to put an employee referral program (ERP) in place and encourage your employees to participate – which is a pretty major task in itself.

That's why so many employee referral software solutions have emerged over the years to help employers get their ERPs up and running smoothly.

Today, we're highlighting ten such employee referral platforms that we believe to be the cream of the crop:

1. Jobvite

When it comes to recruiting software in general, Jobvite is usually a good choice. If you need a platform to help you source, hire, onboard, etc., then Jobvite probably has the functionality you're looking for.

One of the things Jobvite does especially well is employee referrals. In particular, we like the custom Facebook application that allows employers to identify potential candidates via their employees' friends lists. The application also lets employees reach out to those friends through Facebook to extend an invite to apply.

Sia Mohajer of Online Resume Builders was one of the many people who nominated Jobvite for our list. Here's what Mohajer had to say: "Jobvite allows employees to use their own social networks to make referrals. The biggest advantage of this is, as an employer, you don't need to spend time on job boards or searching through hundreds of generic resumes."

Learn more.

2. RolePoint

The coolest thing about RolePoint is the platform's automatic role-matching feature, which aligns employees' contacts with the roles they're most suited for, thereby increasing the chances that any given referral will be a good match.

RolePoint also has some seriously powerful predictive analytics capabilities that allow users to review and adjust their recruitment processes continuously – which is absolutely necessary if you want to keep your ERP running effectively at all times.

Learn more.

3. Zao

Zao expands your referral network and makes rewards administration a breeze at the same time. Rather than limiting participation to existing employees, Zao lets vendors, company alumni, and pretty much anyone else who comes across a job post distributed by your employees to get in on the fun. This builds a "chain" of referrers, so to speak, and everyone along the chain gets rewarded. So, if a friend of a friend of an employee is hired, the employee and the employee's friend get rewarded!

That sounds complicated, I know, but don't worry: You don't have to keep track of the chains. Zao does it for you.

Learn more.

4. Referagig

Aside from having one of the best names ever (go ahead, say it outloud; it's fun!), Referagig also has the benefit of being totally browser-based. That means that no matter where you or your employees are, everyone can access Referagig as long as they have an Internet connection.

Referagig also does an excellent job of keeping employees updated as their referrals move through the process, which helps keep engagement levels high. Employees won't feel like they're throwing names into a black hole; instead, they'll actually feel like they're playing important roles in the company's success.

Learn more.

5. Simppler

Simppler also landed a spot on our list of the top staffing and recruiting startups, and it definitely deserves a repeat mention here. Data is the name of the game in HR and recruiting today, and Simppler has brought it to the employee referral game.

Thanks to some nifty machine-learning algorithms, Simppler can zero in on the best connections for employees to refer for any given job. It takes almost all the effort out of your ERP: Employees just make a few clicks, and Simppler takes care of the rest.

Learn more.

6. Boon

If you and your employees like gamification, then check out Boon. By collecting information about a number of variables, the platform gives employees "Boon scores" based on how many referrals they send in and how well those referrals do in the hiring process. If competition gets your team motivated, then Boon is the best way to get the referrals flowing.

Learn more.

7. Zalp

Zalp calls itself "The Employee Referral Booster," which seems like an accurate title based on the customer testimonials and the company's claim that it can triple your number of referral hires.

If you're the type to take a company's claims about itself with a grain of salt – a reasonable thing to do – then maybe this will carry some weight: Zalp allows employers to implement "micro reward strategies" in which employees can be rewarded for every action they take to promote your jobs and bring in referrals. That sounds to us like a pretty good way to boost employee participation enough to triple your referral hires.

Learn more.

8. Reffind

So many app developers describe their products as "Tinder for X" these days that it's become a bit of a joke. To its credit, Reffind doesn't actually call itself "Tinder for employee referrals," but if it did, it would be justified in doing so.

Basically, it works like this: Employees open the app, and they see a series of open jobs at the organization. They swipe left on the ones they can't help you fill and right on the ones they can help you fill. When they swipe right, they're taken to a screen where they can share the job with the relevant contacts.

Reffind is simple, intuitive, quick, and pretty damn nice to look at, too.

Learn more.

9. Perks

When you think "Perks," you may not think "employee referral program." If anything, you probably think about, well, employee perks.

But don't forget that one of the best ways to ensure your ERP gets buy-in from employees is to offer the right rewards. That's why, despite what you might believe, Perks is a great company to partner with if you want to build an awesome ERP that works. Not only does a Perks ERP give you access to the tools your employees need to make great referrals, but it also gives you access to the best collection of rewards. And Perks handles the rewards fulfillment, which means you can focus on the candidates coming your way.

Learn more.

10. EmployeeReferrals.com

First of all, you have to give them credit for snagging that URL. That being said, EmployeeReferrals.com is more than just a great Web address; it's also a great employee referral software, thanks in part to how easy it is to use.

Employees can make referrals in just three clicks, with the average referral taking about two minutes. Heck, employees don't even have to register or log in to use the app! When referrals are such a breeze, more employees will participate in the program – which means more referrals for you.

Learn more.