Building a Talent Moat: Sourcing Referrals
Moats keep things from getting in, sometimes from getting out - and are much improved with some alligators as reinforcements. In startup land your moat is your competitive lead over the rest of the market - what sets you apart, why are you in the top right of the magic quadrant chart? For talent teams - how do you engage, retain, and attract in demand candidates? One channel we don’t often focus on: sourcing referrals.
With AI generated applicant noise and an unforgiving talent market - staying one step (or two gator lengths ahead) of your competitors is critical. Identifying “known” talent 1-2 degrees removed from your current team and engaging employees in building their own organization will help maintain that moat.
But where to start? Networking isn’t for everyone. For most employees it’s ambiguous, no one is taught how to network, and in digital spaces (while enabled to make it easier) it still doesn’t feel natural to most people. So it’s already a difficult channel - instead of doing cold outreach solo for hours you need to partner with an employee who isn’t well versed in the exercise to begin with.
And there’s some major brain fog. The majority of your coworkers aren’t proactively going back through their connections to figure out if anyone they used to know would be a good fit for that Accounting Specialist position you just posted. (Or more pressing, the Machine Learning team you’re trying to spin up to make your CTO’s AI fever dreams a reality).
Finally, they don’t want to be complicit in the system. The employees you need to leverage for this exercise have already been on the receiving end of recruiter spam, so helping you do that while being name dropped with 3 old connections is a non-starter.
Approach referral sourcing as the complex project it really is - it’s part targeted lead generation, part market research, and part fishing for undiscovered talent. And, even with the best prep it may net you zero results, but you still need the employee to walk away feeling like they had a positive interaction with you.
The Talk
Cue a recruiter and an engineer (already grumpy they’ve been pulled out of their flow to sit in a conference room and get grilled) and after you list the 3 folks you want intros to, you start fishing and it usually sounds like:
Who do you know that’s looking / open to work right now?
Who was the best / highest achieving / rockstar on your team?
Who had the highest sales numbers / never missed quota?
What manager did you like the best?
Who is unhappy and would take a call?
Most employees shut down after the first couple of questions - if they knew someone they would have already recommended them (maybe). Plus they wouldn’t call a peer a rockstar. Why do I have to do recruiting work? Don’t we have a whole team of people for this? And what do I get? An extra meeting.
Reframing the conversation is critical.
Start here: You’ll want a specific role that sits on the employee’s team or adjacent to it. Speak as a peer vs the hiring expert - you’re sharing something you’re working on and could use their help.
Then, gauge how much they know about the role, company referral program, and critical outcomes for the hire. Fill in the gaps, ask for their insights into their team or current projects, then pivot to your shortlist of leads in their network.
Bring 1-2 companies they’ve previously worked for that have talent you’re looking to source for some market research*, which might look like:
Did COMPANY have an X type of team? What did they call themselves?
Were there any unique titles for this type of job?
I noticed a lot of profiles that had “manager” or “director” - did these folks have direct reports?
Was this team carrying a quota?
*Stay out of NDA/proprietary company information territory
But if you’re not making headway on either of those prepped lists you’ll want to start by jogging their memories of folks not in their connections list - or at least not ones you flagged. (Now we’re fishing).
Try some of these questions:
Who was an unsung hero on your team? Was there anyone working behind the scenes to help solve problems or set the team up for success?
We’re looking for people who drove or created a specific culture on the team that people enjoyed working within - can you think of anyone like that?
Was there anyone who was a leader without the title that people looked up to?
Did you work for any managers that were both liked and had high expectations of their team?
Did you notice anyone who helped others outside of their group?
Who did something that was best for the team but not themselves?
Was there anyone you worked with that doubled down on improving their skillset?
Whatever you do, don’t end the conversation here with: “Please send this Inmail template and forward any replies.”
Measure their interest and ability in having an initial call to provide information to the referral, answer questions, meeting at onsite interviews, or becoming a new hire onboarding buddy. We want to think long term versus just the first outreach - we’re working towards a relationship, not a transaction.
Draft a first outreach together or share some first drafts and links so they can write something in their own voice. It’s key that any interactions they have with candidates are authentic to the employee’s communication style while still including the right company information. Walk them through the interview process, and what will happen if the referral is hired.
Then, land on asking for feedback - was there anything or anyone you missed? Anything you could have prepared them for to make the conversation more productive or helpful? Would they recommend any of their teammates to chat with you?
Changing your approach is critical
The standard “tell me who was the best coder on your team” questions typically yield one profile: the flashy, high achiever who would save the day (and already has a stack of unread recruiter pitches in their inbox). In tech startups the person that saves the day usually helped create the conditions where it needed saving in the first place.
Asking more creative questions may lead you to more diverse skill sets and experiences: someone maybe more introverted but highly technical, the person without the manager title who rallies the team, or unseen talent who aren’t online or super networked (see: old LinkedIn profiles you didn’t even consider).
Fine tuning your sourcing questions allows you to also go after specific attributes and values that the team or organization at large is seeking so you’ll want to blend performance, collaboration, and visibility as you ask about a potential referral to get a stronger sense of how they may fit into your current puzzle.
Change your sourcing approach to focus on soft skills that people experience vs trying to find performance stats a peer might not be aware of (how many tickets did this person close a day? I dunno.) A more thoughtful approach as a partner versus a recruiter looking to raid connections and leverage their name will yield better results.
Using referrals as an AI defense isn’t perfect
Referrals can be a pain. People game the referral bonus system, candidates skip interviews or are given all green flags with little vetting (leaving recruiters to play traffic cop), there’s this 2018 study that haunts me pointing to referrals as a potential diversity landmine, and handling fights over who submitted who first leaves you feeling like Judge Judy by midday.
But sourcing referrals puts the recruiter in the lead - you’re targeting and validating specific profiles.
AI is already here. Even if your organization hasn’t bought or upgraded to AI driven TA platforms and ATS add-ons - your candidates are using it to customize resumes and cover letters to match your job posts, automatically apply for jobs, answer questions on the fly in interviews, complete their assessments, and more. And the AI tools on our side haven’t caught up in a meaningful way, leaving us with an overflowing applicant pool. Sourcing referrals can help cut through the noise and reduce your risk with referenceable talent.
We’re not all in sales - but we can all be in recruiting
There’s a cringe moment at most all hands or annual events where your CRO hops up on stage and asks everyone working in sales to stand up, then asks everyone to stand up because “We’re all in sales”. But…you aren’t pitching enterprise productivity software all day. You know what you do talk about at least once a day? How your day was - and most of it was spent at work.
Your employees are a huge recruiting asset - each one a brand ambassador. Every day they have a chance to talk about work, the company, their boss, how benefits were rolled out, and this one random meeting with a recruiter that asked them to log into LinkedIn together. And each of those interactions that gets shared - at happy hour, over dinner, in a Call of Duty sesh, voice memos between besties - ripple outwards and form an often unseen part of your talent brand.
One of the best ways to hurdle over low engagement is to inject accountability and ownership. If you’ve agreed to help make that hire on your team, reconnect with 2 of your ex-colleagues, or even help consult on what candidates will hear about what you’re working on - you’re investing in the business.
As a talent team, reframing how we approach sourcing referrals to gain trust and buy-in from our employees (as well as recognizing them with referral bonuses) drives a competitive advantage and allows us to tap into a precious resource that’s currently sitting dormant.
Go build your talent moat - and don’t forget to stock it with alligators.
I hope this post inspired you - if it did I’d love to hear from you!
