Sunday, March 8, 2009

An Internal referral.


Internal referals in an organizations are a common thing in most companies. Staff engage in it to get the referal bonus or to 'help' someone in their family or friends circle to get a job in the same company , often reluctantly and many times due to incessant followups which become unavoidable after a certain point of time. Some refer others to companies to get in their own clique of friends or ex colleagues hoping that they will form a coterie of like minded poeple who in turn can do great things for the company and also mutually benifit from it. Some do it for purely placing their own sources in strategic positions to wield power/influence.

Most of the times this action serves counterproductive to the reason why the person did the referal. Many a times, once the refered person gets on board, he/she starts to pursue their own agenda which in most cases are diferent from the reason why the person who refered him actually did. It is also seen that many a times, the person who has been referred goes on to build great credibility in the organization and becomes larger that the person who refered or is a very bad performer and takes down the credibility that the referer had built over many years of had work, PR and other commendable as well as unmentionable things.

After years of working in large corporations and refering some persons into the same organizations, I have now a fair understanding of the dynamics of the same and have arrived at some observations around referals that I find is amusing and common. This might be of help as pointers to follow or avoid when refering others to your organization;

Set your expectations and align agendas accordingly right at the start lest agendas clash or never meet.

Refer high performers from other companies, who are significantly junior to you and wait until the person comes on board and builds goodwill and then go to town with posters screaming , you refered the person and thus sucking away that persons hard earned goodwill and adding it to yours .

Refer successful and knowledgable persons to key positions that will never be a threat to your own line of work or reputation and you can still benifit from the success of the persons own capabilities and successes by passing on the word that you refered him in.

Refer and ensure that when the person becomes successful, the person himself goes tom tom that you refered him and helped him achieve what he did and thus transfering all of his success and credibility over to you.

Never refer intelligent and efficient people in your own area of work who can compete with you and even win - they might be a threat for your survival iteslf. Do so only if you know for sure that you are better than him and can ward off any such actions with stellar performances yourselves!

I recently refered a person into my company to a senior position than mine purely based on the need of my organization and the skills of the individual matching the same.Even though I am not paid any referal bonus for this noble act as we do not have a referal reward policy , I am happy that the organization seems to have chosen to hire the person and the person has been working at building his success story in line with the conpany's expectations. I hope I did the right thing and this will not boomerang some day. I also realise that I have just added on another dimension to the whole referal thing by refering a person to such a position. It has now partly become my resposnibility personally to ensure that he succeeds in this role so that the company, himself and I benefit from it. Well dint I have enough on my plate earlier?