June 11, 2025 • 25 mins
In a world increasingly dominated by AI-powered recruiting tools, the human touch of employee referrals might just be your organization's secret weapon. Mike Stafiej, CEO and founder of ERIN, joins Bill Banham on the HRchat Show to reveal how properly implemented employee referral programs drive five times more hires while cutting turnover in half.
"Employee referrals is not a new concept," Mike acknowledges, "but if you grab your average employee and say, 'Hey, do you know how much you can earn for referring to this job?' they're going to have no idea what you're talking about." This lack of transparency and cumbersome administrative processes have traditionally hampered what should be one of recruiting's most powerful channels. The ERIN platform tackles these challenges by automating everything from submission to payment, handling complex global policies across different countries, currencies, and business units.
Organizations using ERIN's approach see dramatic increases in referral participation, explains Mike, from initial adoption rates around 20% to as high as 80% over time. This means tapping into employees who were previously disengaged from talent acquisition efforts. Gamification plays a crucial role in this transformation, bringing "smaller, faster rewards earlier into the process" to counteract the typically lengthy referral timeline. Employees earn points for actions like sharing jobs on social media or logging into the app, creating immediate gratification rather than waiting months for a referral to complete the hiring process.
Perhaps most fascinating is Mike's perspective on how employee referrals will evolve alongside AI recruiting tools. As both employers and candidates increasingly leverage AI in the hiring process, we're moving "from a world where 60 applications per job is acceptable to one where you'll have 10,000 applications per hire." In this noise-filled environment, employee referrals maintain the critical human element at scale, providing pre-vetted candidates who already understand the company culture.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom and visitHRGazettecom.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannam, and in
this episode we're going toconsider the value of empowering
employees to participatedirectly in recruiting and
internal talent development.
And joining me on the show thistime is the fantastic,
wonderful, superb mike staffieceo over at erin, an employee
referral and internal mobilityplatform that aims, or claims,
(00:53):
to drive five times more hiresfrom employee referrals and cuts
turnover in half.
As an entrepreneur, mike isfocused on creating and
innovating technology solutionsthat achieve operational
efficiencies for businesses andhave lasting impacts on people's
lives.
That's a pretty good mission.
How are you doing, mike?
Welcome to the show today I'mgreat.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
That was a great intro too, so I was about I was
getting ready to say who I am,what I do, but I think you
nailed it uh, so I'm excited forthat oh man, there goes my next
question.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Then usually we start with who are you, what do you
do?
So let me change that up.
Instead of that, mike, whatgets you up in the morning?
Tell us that.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My three children.
I don't mean that as like Iwake up for them.
I mean it because they'rejumping on me and bouncing on me
.
No, but I appreciate the intro.
But, as you said, my name isMike Staffy.
I am the CEO and founder ofAaron.
We're an employee referralplatform and I know we have
plenty of time here to dig intowhat that means, but at a high
(01:53):
level.
We're looking to automateeverything from submission to
payment and all the manualnuances in between.
By doing that, we can create amuch better experience on the
front end for the employees thatare using the platform.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Love it.
Thank you very much, and beforewe go any further, can I just
say I completely relate to you.
So I was out last nightwatching the Europa League final
.
We're recording this episode inthe middle of May.
Well done, tottenham Hotspur.
By the way.
I got home and my 10 monthdaughter was in bed with my
other half, which meant that Ihad to sleep on the couch, and
this morning I was woken up bymy four-year-old boy jumping on
(02:27):
my chest.
Dad, wake up, I'm hungry.
That's how it goes.
Yeah, thanks for listening tothis episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Okay, so let's get into themeat of today's conversation.
(02:53):
Aaron was recently named TalentAcquisition Category Winner in
2025 HR Tech Awards, socongratulations.
Tell us more about why thatparticular award matters and
what it says about Aaron.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, I'll tell you, we're not the first ones to
tackle employee referrals.
We're probably not the last,but it is a you know.
Forgive the phrase, it's anunsexy piece of HR tech, right?
So it's not AI, it's not thisbrand new concept, but it is a
topic that I think is important.
There's a ton of people thattalk about the importance of
(03:30):
referrals and how that fitsstrategically as part of their
funnel and as part of their planfor talent acquisition.
So I guess my point is it'soften kind of like forgotten
about until you really need todig in deep on it.
So getting an award, it startsbringing that in to the front
lines of hey, we don't have tohave ai at the end of our
(03:51):
product name to get attention.
So we're super thankful forthat and we're hoping that it
helps other people understandkind of the importance of how we
can fit into their strategy fortalent acquisition.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, that's quite a humble answer there.
Well, very well done to you andyour team.
Aaron claims to drive fivetimes more hires from referrals
and cut turnover in half.
These are bold statements.
What's the secret sauce behindthose results?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yep for sure.
So it's important to know, kindof who our customer is right.
So obviously that is a bigclaim and we make it proudly,
but it's a claim that's mostlytargeted for enterprise in some
mediums, as businesses.
Now, the reason I bring up thatnuance is because when you're
talking about what holds youback from being successful with
(04:45):
employee referrals, that's whatwe're tackling is the complexity
of organizations.
So the larger you are, the morecomplicated you are.
That's where we can providevalue, and often it's a very
segmented process.
If you're operating out of 85different countries, it's
speaking 13 different languages,paying 20 different currencies.
That's a logistical problem.
(05:06):
By bringing that all togetherand lowering the administrative
overhead, we create anopportunity to now provide an
end user experience that's muchmore transparent than anything
they're used to, right?
So we take all this complexity,we smooth it all out, we say
it's okay, we got this, and thenwe can show the employee like
(05:26):
hey, it's no longer just a,here's my buddy and move on,
it's here's my buddy.
I get to track them the wholeway through the process.
I get to then track the bonusthrough the process.
I get to know when I get paidso I can buy that new Xbox,
right.
So it is a flywheel.
It's not just the upfrontexperience, it's not just the
automation, it's one feeding theother and then creating bigger
(05:48):
results.
So what we often see is, whenwe roll out I just hugged a
large customer yesterday theyjust broke 20% adoption about a
couple months into their launch,which is great, which is great.
And what happens is like that'syour, that's your power users,
right?
Those are the people that arereferring anyway.
Once you start seeping into 30,40, 50% user adoption, we have
(06:09):
customers over 80%.
That's when you're now tappinginto people that were not
participating in talentacquisition before.
So when you have that level ofemployee adoption, things start
happening.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
More hires come from referrals and all the downstream
effects start taking place howimportant is the hr department
in making sure that thoseemployee referrals happen, that
employees feel incentivized todo so, they feel engaged, they
believe in the company culture?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I'm guessing the hr department is pretty important
yeah, it's honestly the thebiggest things like transparency
and communication.
Right, this is something thatbusiness like referrals is not a
new concept.
They've been doing this fordecades it's.
But if you grab your averageemployee and you say, hey, do
you know how much you can earnfor referring to this job,
they're gonna have no idea whatyou're talking about.
(06:58):
So so part of what we you know,we partner with with hrta to
those communications, the thingsthat are annoying for them and
are overhead, we can bring thatinto software and streamline it.
So it is critical that they'reactive in it.
But the things that were manualwork before, now we can get to
(07:19):
the employee directly and thetime they save allows them to
get more creative and more fun.
That's the thing.
Like sure, we're going to cutdown 90 of your administration,
but with your extra time now youcan start doing fun things to
promote the program on a widerscale so that you get more
results in the end.
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Speaker 2 (08:45):
Your platform features gamification to drive
participation, so when folksaren't playing on their Xboxes,
they're in your tool.
How does gamification enhanceemployee engagement within the
recruitment process?
Can you maybe also share somestats around that?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, 100%.
See, 100% is a stat, so Ialready shared one.
The gamification was a buzzwordin the late teens for a lot of
software products, right, whenwe talk about gamification for
referrals, there's a lot of waysyou can do it.
But a way to kind ofoversimplify it, more as a
strategy rather than feature, ishow can you bring smaller,
(09:27):
faster rewards earlier into theprocess so that it keeps the
employees excited, right?
The problem with employeereferral programs is that
they're too far out.
I refer you it's going to takeweeks for you to get hired.
Then I got to wait 90 days toget paid.
Plus, I got to wait for thenext payroll run, right?
So I'm talking about half ayear before I'm going to get any
money out of it.
So gamification allows us tobring kind of more of that
(09:49):
excitement upfront and moreinstant gratification.
So things like earning pointsas you take steps throughout the
process.
It's, you know, every time Ilog into the mobile app or I
share on social media, thoughthat's activity that's rewarded
through gamification immediatelyrather than 180 days later.
So we have a lot of cool waysyou can leverage that.
With leaderboards, we have theability to instantly let them
(10:14):
cash out for a gift card ifthat's part of what you put in.
We have a lot of customers thatdon't do financial rewards for
points, but they'll do giveawaysand it gives them a marketing
reason, right?
So, hey, for every 100 pointsyou earn every month, we're
going to do a few giveaways forAmazon gift cards or time off or
something like that, and thenthat gives them a reason to
(10:34):
remarket back to the employees.
Look at Bob he got an iPad Projust by logging in every week,
right?
So when we can create that moreupfront, instant gratification,
that's when you get higherparticipation through
gamification.
That's the difference betweenit being a buzzword and actually
being part of your strategy foradoption.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Okay, Bob, with all these cool technologies for
logging in.
Good work, Bob.
Okay.
So Aaron accommodates complexreferral policies such as
diversity incentives andmulti-currency payouts.
I've got a couple of questionsfor you around this.
Firstly, what's the appetitefor incentives around diverse
hires in 2025?
We've got a couple of questionsfor you around this.
Firstly, what's the appetitefor incentives around diverse
hires in 2025?
(11:13):
We've seen a lot of changes.
We've seen the move away fromthe E in DEI.
We've had more of a focus onstability.
The term SHRM uses this a lot,so I'd love to hear your
experiences around that.
And also, how did you designerin to handle that level of
flexibility and compliance?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
yeah, both great questions, the um.
So I'll tell you that when welaunched 2019, like the biggest
pushback on investing employeereferrals is that it does not
create a diverse organization.
Um, and which is it's when youthink about, is a big statement
assuming that your employeesonly know people that look and
(11:53):
act like them and, at the sametime, already assuming you don't
have a diverse organization,and then that's just going to
snowball that.
So when we built that featureyears ago now at least five
years ago now the goal was tokind of break down some of that
stereotype, and not only that.
(12:16):
So it was basically kind of acountermeasure to like a reason
not to invest in referrals,which is always silly.
But the thing, the problem withdiversity programs is that
their marketing tools they'renot something that your
employees actually participatein.
What I mean by that is you cansay all you want that you
believe in strong diversity, buthow do you actually execute on
that in a company level?
So by adding that feature, wewere able to get the employees
(12:40):
actually participating in thecompany, kind of putting their
money where their mouth is,which is, hey, if you refer,
somebody will pay you, and ifthey qualify as one of these
targeted hires.
We're going to pay you morebecause that's important to our
business and we're going to payyou more because that's
important to our business andwe're going to invest into that.
So it was a really cool featurewhen we launched it, the way it
works.
We don't make any determinationon what qualifies or what
doesn't, so it's more of a kickright.
(13:00):
We call it diversity bonus as amarketing play, but it's
basically hey.
If there's a box checked onthis candidate's application,
for whatever reason, we caninclude a bigger bonus.
So it's super flexible.
You can apply it to basicallyany scenario where you'd want to
incentivize employees to bringin certain talent, this could be
(13:21):
hey.
If they have top secretclearance, you know we can give
them a kicker.
If we had a lot of somecustomers, especially overseas,
where their sales teams weremale dominated, and if it was a
female on the sales team andsales rule, they got the kicker.
So things like that veteransright.
So obviously diversity includesa lot of groups, but it doesn't
(13:44):
necessarily.
It could be anybody withcertain skills that are just
more targeted higher.
To answer your question, theappetite is down.
It is not a topic that comes upnearly as much as it did back
in the day for us, but thefeature is still there.
It can be leveraged for anyorganization that uses our
product.
The other part of your questionis actually the the more
(14:07):
complicated answer and oursecret sauce, right, which is
how do we handle such complexity?
We have one customer, we haveseveral customers, but one in
particular that I'm thinking of,that has, I think, 4 000 bonus
combinations, right, 80 somecountries they're.
They have four business unitsand then they have seven tiers
of jobs, job levels, with akicker.
(14:29):
If you have top secretclearance or secret clearance,
right, two different kickers,right.
So it becomes exponentiallycomplicated because you have a
different policy for everycountry.
You have a different policy forevery business unit in every
country.
You have a different policy forevery job tier for every
business unit in every country,right?
And then you have a morecomplicated one when you add in
secret clearances, right.
(14:50):
So it just becomes amultiplication issue, right?
So the way we built our productback in the day, we just used
heavy customization, heavy,heavy coding that does not scale
, it makes it impossible tomaintain, it makes it impossible
to audit.
So we built out the product tohave like a policy builder that
can be extremely complex, and wepair that with a feature called
(15:12):
groups that allow us to controlthe experience based on the
group that the employee belongsinto.
I know that all sounds prettyboring, so I'm going to give you
a simple example to tie that up.
If I'm in the US and I'mlooking at a job, it's going to
say, hey, mike, you can earn$1,000 for this job.
If you're in the UK, it's goingto say, hey, bill, you can earn
(15:34):
1,200 pounds for this job.
So it actually not only does itmanage what policy you belong
to, but it actually changes theexperience in real time, so that
the employees participatingwill only ever see how much they
can earn in their nativecurrency, not just some number
that exists across the platform.
(15:55):
So by localizing thatexperience, we can definitely
tap into those differentcountries and get higher
participation and ensure thatpayroll pays the right people,
the right amount and the rightcurrency.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You do a very good job at explaining this stuff.
I was reading your bio ahead ofthis, uh, ahead of this
interview.
You come from a biz dev andsales background, um, and when
you say things like you know wewe needed, we needed to add this
feature to prove out thebusiness case, um, it's, it's
very straightforward, youexplain it very well, so I kudos
to you, sir.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I was in there before as a person.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So my next question.
I'm reading it again now.
It's a bit lame, but given yourvery high standard of being
able to produce good answers, itmight become quite interesting
as an answer.
The question is how do you seethe role of employee referrals
evolving over the next few years, especially in the age of AI
and skills-based hiring?
So could have done better withthat question, but I suspect the
(16:55):
answer is going to be quiteinteresting.
Give it a go.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I hope you find it interesting.
So I 100% believe that therewill be a huge swing to AI for
talent acquisition teams.
We're seeing it happen already.
So that's not even aninteresting statement by me.
However, I also believe thiscan be an overinvestment in AI,
meaning that people are gonna goa little too hard into it and
(17:19):
then have to pull back a littlebit and say, eh, maybe we put a
little bit too much faith in therobots, let's get a few more
humans involved, because what AIis really good at doing is
repetitive tasks, and screeningresumes is a perfect example of
a repetitive task.
Now that's and you can removethe bias from it.
You can.
It can work nonstop, right.
So, like AI is a is not goodfor recruiters.
(17:42):
You know.
Period, right.
That said, removing humans fromthe process 100% is also not
good for companies.
So my more recent hot take isthat, as we do this heavy
investment into AI andpotentially overinvestment into
AI employee referrals is a greatway to keep humans involved in
(18:02):
the process and make it muchmore efficient.
You're coming into a worldwhere you know we're leaving, a
world where 60 applications froma job board per one hire is
acceptable.
We're coming into a world whereyou're going to have 10,000
applications per one hire,because AI is being used on both
sides.
It's not just talentacquisition teams using AI, it's
also the candidates using AI,and we can't be mad at them for
(18:24):
it.
If we're going to screen themagainst it, they're going to use
it against them, right?
So you're going to have now aworld where somebody on the job
hunt and we see it already has10,000 applications.
There's going to be a lot ofnoise, a lot of noise.
And how do you create thatconnection, that more personal,
upfront experience, when youdon't have any recruiters left
on your team?
Employee referrals is the secretweapon, right?
(18:46):
So that is keeping that humanelement in there at scale and at
efficiency, right?
And it's still creating avetting process that's not
happening in the interviewprocess today and therefore AI
will not be able to replicate it, because it doesn't exist.
What I mean by that is hey,bill, I refer you for a job, I'm
(19:08):
going to tell you a little bitabout what's up and how it works
here, and you're going to havea little bit more information
than just somebody coming infrom a job board.
You're going to know a littlebit of the dirty laundry in a
good way and that's whyreferrals across the board stay
longer than traditional hires,because there's a level of
vetting that's happening andconnection and culture that's
(19:29):
being established even beforeyou start on day one.
So hopefully that was a solidanswer for you.
But I think you know we'llbring on the AI and we'll bring
in the humans, right.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
A couple of hours ago I was interviewing a C-suite
executive at a very large,well-known brand that I shall
not mention, and we're talkingabout how ai is uh impacting uh
internal ta professionals and umyou know, her line of answers
were a lot were long lines ofit's wonderful, it's freeing up
their time.
Then I asked the follow-upquestion yeah, but how many
(20:04):
people have you let go in thatdepartment over the last year?
31%, 31% went in the last 12months.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
There we go.
I mean you've got to pay forthe tools, right?
I mean that's the thing.
It's an efficiency play.
No one's adding extra costsjust to do it.
So often when those decisionsare made it gets offset
somewhere else, and with ai,it's it.
That's that's why they buy ai.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It's to reduce the cost elsewhere okay, we are
already coming towards the endof this particular conversation,
so my last few questions foryou are those wrap-up questions
where we like to leave ourlisteners with tangible
takeaways.
Uh, so next answer a bit of asummary of some of the things
that you've already said, butI'm going to challenge you to
answer in 60 seconds or less, soin one minute or less.
(20:54):
Mike, for organizationsstruggling with high turnover or
engagement issues, where do yousuggest that they start when
rethinking their referral ormobility strategies?
Go?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Perfect One.
Automation frees up time andability to do other things, and
it allows you to put inprocesses that are super
cumbersome without technology.
So use technology to automatethe things that you've always
wanted to do.
For example, make referralspart of your onboarding process.
Right, if you're not doing thattoday, technology can enroll
(21:30):
them in a drip campaign from dayone to get them in there.
So, when you're thinking aboutthe things that are holding you
back, if there is software thatcould accelerate that for you,
don't let it hold you backanymore.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh, three seconds to spare, good work.
Okay, let's talk about yourroadmap.
What's coming up for, aaron?
What are you particularlyexcited about that you can share
with our listeners today?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
For sure.
We're working on several reallycool things right now A lot of
engagement factors that justmake it easier for employees to
participate, but also moreadvanced capabilities for the
talent acquisition teamthemselves.
For example, one of the biggestproblems we hear is that when I
hire somebody, they're ready togo right away, but they may not
(22:09):
start for 30 days.
So we have a new feature comingout, called pre-hire, where the
second they get hired they'reable to start participating in
the program.
We'll automatically merge itwith their employee account when
they start and then we'll makesure that they get paid based on
the policy for those pre-hireemployees.
So it's a super cool featurethat really opens up the door to
(22:34):
things that were not possiblebefore.
Um, and you know, that bringsus earlier into the process to
get heavier participation.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Make them part of the program on day one.
I love it.
Uh, you've got a bit of an hrgazette exclusive there, I think
, listeners, um, my penultimatequestion before I ask you how
folks can connect with you hasto be what's up with the sloths
behind you?
So this is an audio onlypodcast, but, um, um, mike is a
very dynamic person, it wouldappear that's what I'm getting
from from this call.
(22:58):
He's, uh, he is a charismatic,gregarious kind of guy, but he's
got a painting of four slothsand a sloth teddy bear behind
him.
So what's that about?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
there's multiple sloth, uh stuffed animals back
there.
You just can't see them.
So, like the?
Uh, the real, the simple storyis I like sloths, but the real
story is that, uh, years ago,when we were doing our first
sherman annual conference, weneeded something to give away
and my whole take was nobodywants our junk, they're just
going to take it, throw it out,so let's not spend the money on
(23:30):
it.
However, what everyone wants issomething to take home for
their kids.
So we got this floppy arm sloth.
We had a hundred of themsitting at the booth and they
went almost immediately.
Everyone had to sign up for ademo to get them.
They didn't care.
They wanted to take somethingback to their kids after being
gone for a week.
So that you know, that kind ofstroke of marketing genius
(23:50):
settled in and we're like well,let's just kind of make that
part of our culture.
It's fun.
Um, like there's cat people anddog people, but everyone's a
sloth person.
So the?
Uh.
You know, if you ever are inpittsburgh and you're at our
office, it will creep you outbecause there's a lot of sloth
stuff all around and justfinally for today, mike, how can
our listeners connect with you?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
is that linkedin, email, instagram, wherever else?
And, of course, how can theylearn more about erin?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
yeah, check us out at erinappcom.
E-r-i-n-a-p-pcom.
My email is just mike aterinappcom, so that's simple
enough.
The harder thing would be tofigure out how to spell my last
name and find me on linkedin,but I invite you to try that as
well and, uh, looking forward tochatting yeah, I do have to say
listen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I did double check with mike the pronunciation of
his surname before we hit recordday, because regular listeners
of this show will know thatpronunciation is not my strong
suit.
Mike, uh, you're a nice chap.
I want to do this again withyou soon, but for now, thank you
very much for being my guest.
Thank you, bill and listeners.
As always, until next time.
Happy working.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannam, and in
this episode we're going toconsider the value of empowering
employees to participatedirectly in recruiting and
internal talent development.
And joining me on the show thistime is the fantastic,
wonderful, superb mike staffieceo over at erin, an employee
referral and internal mobilityplatform that aims, or claims,
(00:53):
to drive five times more hiresfrom employee referrals and cuts
turnover in half.
As an entrepreneur, mike isfocused on creating and
innovating technology solutionsthat achieve operational
efficiencies for businesses andhave lasting impacts on people's
lives.
That's a pretty good mission.
How are you doing, mike?
Welcome to the show today I'mgreat.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
That was a great intro too, so I was about I was
getting ready to say who I am,what I do, but I think you
nailed it uh, so I'm excited forthat oh man, there goes my next
question.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Then usually we start with who are you, what do you
do?
So let me change that up.
Instead of that, mike, whatgets you up in the morning?
Tell us that.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
My three children.
I don't mean that as like Iwake up for them.
I mean it because they'rejumping on me and bouncing on me
.
No, but I appreciate the intro.
But, as you said, my name isMike Staffy.
I am the CEO and founder ofAaron.
We're an employee referralplatform and I know we have
plenty of time here to dig intowhat that means, but at a high
(01:53):
level.
We're looking to automateeverything from submission to
payment and all the manualnuances in between.
By doing that, we can create amuch better experience on the
front end for the employees thatare using the platform.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Love it.
Thank you very much, and beforewe go any further, can I just
say I completely relate to you.
So I was out last nightwatching the Europa League final
.
We're recording this episode inthe middle of May.
Well done, tottenham Hotspur.
By the way.
I got home and my 10 monthdaughter was in bed with my
other half, which meant that Ihad to sleep on the couch, and
this morning I was woken up bymy four-year-old boy jumping on
(02:27):
my chest.
Dad, wake up, I'm hungry.
That's how it goes.
Yeah, thanks for listening tothis episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Okay, so let's get into themeat of today's conversation.
(02:53):
Aaron was recently named TalentAcquisition Category Winner in
2025 HR Tech Awards, socongratulations.
Tell us more about why thatparticular award matters and
what it says about Aaron.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, I'll tell you, we're not the first ones to
tackle employee referrals.
We're probably not the last,but it is a you know.
Forgive the phrase, it's anunsexy piece of HR tech, right?
So it's not AI, it's not thisbrand new concept, but it is a
topic that I think is important.
There's a ton of people thattalk about the importance of
(03:30):
referrals and how that fitsstrategically as part of their
funnel and as part of their planfor talent acquisition.
So I guess my point is it'soften kind of like forgotten
about until you really need todig in deep on it.
So getting an award, it startsbringing that in to the front
lines of hey, we don't have tohave ai at the end of our
(03:51):
product name to get attention.
So we're super thankful forthat and we're hoping that it
helps other people understandkind of the importance of how we
can fit into their strategy fortalent acquisition.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, that's quite a humble answer there.
Well, very well done to you andyour team.
Aaron claims to drive fivetimes more hires from referrals
and cut turnover in half.
These are bold statements.
What's the secret sauce behindthose results?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yep for sure.
So it's important to know, kindof who our customer is right.
So obviously that is a bigclaim and we make it proudly,
but it's a claim that's mostlytargeted for enterprise in some
mediums, as businesses.
Now, the reason I bring up thatnuance is because when you're
talking about what holds youback from being successful with
(04:45):
employee referrals, that's whatwe're tackling is the complexity
of organizations.
So the larger you are, the morecomplicated you are.
That's where we can providevalue, and often it's a very
segmented process.
If you're operating out of 85different countries, it's
speaking 13 different languages,paying 20 different currencies.
That's a logistical problem.
(05:06):
By bringing that all togetherand lowering the administrative
overhead, we create anopportunity to now provide an
end user experience that's muchmore transparent than anything
they're used to, right?
So we take all this complexity,we smooth it all out, we say
it's okay, we got this, and thenwe can show the employee like
(05:26):
hey, it's no longer just a,here's my buddy and move on,
it's here's my buddy.
I get to track them the wholeway through the process.
I get to then track the bonusthrough the process.
I get to know when I get paidso I can buy that new Xbox,
right.
So it is a flywheel.
It's not just the upfrontexperience, it's not just the
automation, it's one feeding theother and then creating bigger
(05:48):
results.
So what we often see is, whenwe roll out I just hugged a
large customer yesterday theyjust broke 20% adoption about a
couple months into their launch,which is great, which is great.
And what happens is like that'syour, that's your power users,
right?
Those are the people that arereferring anyway.
Once you start seeping into 30,40, 50% user adoption, we have
(06:09):
customers over 80%.
That's when you're now tappinginto people that were not
participating in talentacquisition before.
So when you have that level ofemployee adoption, things start
happening.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
More hires come from referrals and all the downstream
effects start taking place howimportant is the hr department
in making sure that thoseemployee referrals happen, that
employees feel incentivized todo so, they feel engaged, they
believe in the company culture?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I'm guessing the hr department is pretty important
yeah, it's honestly the thebiggest things like transparency
and communication.
Right, this is something thatbusiness like referrals is not a
new concept.
They've been doing this fordecades it's.
But if you grab your averageemployee and you say, hey, do
you know how much you can earnfor referring to this job,
they're gonna have no idea whatyou're talking about.
(06:58):
So so part of what we you know,we partner with with hrta to
those communications, the thingsthat are annoying for them and
are overhead, we can bring thatinto software and streamline it.
So it is critical that they'reactive in it.
But the things that were manualwork before, now we can get to
(07:19):
the employee directly and thetime they save allows them to
get more creative and more fun.
That's the thing.
Like sure, we're going to cutdown 90 of your administration,
but with your extra time now youcan start doing fun things to
promote the program on a widerscale so that you get more
results in the end.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
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employees during times of crisisis more vital than ever.
The crisis Crisis ReadyWorkplace program, designed by
Dr Bill Howitt and brought toyou in partnership with HR News
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(07:56):
tools needed to effectivelynavigate workplace crisis,
ultimately boosting employeewell-being and enhancing
organizational performance.
Crisis-ready workplace willtake leaders beyond conventional
risk preparedness to redefinewhat it means to lead through
uncertainty.
Expect to dive deep intointeractive sessions,
groundbreaking strategies andtransformative insights designed
(08:18):
to prepare organizations forany challenge.
This comprehensive program ispre-approved for 14 hours of CPD
credits.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Your platform features gamification to drive
participation, so when folksaren't playing on their Xboxes,
they're in your tool.
How does gamification enhanceemployee engagement within the
recruitment process?
Can you maybe also share somestats around that?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, 100%.
See, 100% is a stat, so Ialready shared one.
The gamification was a buzzwordin the late teens for a lot of
software products, right, whenwe talk about gamification for
referrals, there's a lot of waysyou can do it.
But a way to kind ofoversimplify it, more as a
strategy rather than feature, ishow can you bring smaller,
(09:27):
faster rewards earlier into theprocess so that it keeps the
employees excited, right?
The problem with employeereferral programs is that
they're too far out.
I refer you it's going to takeweeks for you to get hired.
Then I got to wait 90 days toget paid.
Plus, I got to wait for thenext payroll run, right?
So I'm talking about half ayear before I'm going to get any
money out of it.
So gamification allows us tobring kind of more of that
(09:49):
excitement upfront and moreinstant gratification.
So things like earning pointsas you take steps throughout the
process.
It's, you know, every time Ilog into the mobile app or I
share on social media, thoughthat's activity that's rewarded
through gamification immediatelyrather than 180 days later.
So we have a lot of cool waysyou can leverage that.
With leaderboards, we have theability to instantly let them
(10:14):
cash out for a gift card ifthat's part of what you put in.
We have a lot of customers thatdon't do financial rewards for
points, but they'll do giveawaysand it gives them a marketing
reason, right?
So, hey, for every 100 pointsyou earn every month, we're
going to do a few giveaways forAmazon gift cards or time off or
something like that, and thenthat gives them a reason to
(10:34):
remarket back to the employees.
Look at Bob he got an iPad Projust by logging in every week,
right?
So when we can create that moreupfront, instant gratification,
that's when you get higherparticipation through
gamification.
That's the difference betweenit being a buzzword and actually
being part of your strategy foradoption.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Okay, Bob, with all these cool technologies for
logging in.
Good work, Bob.
Okay.
So Aaron accommodates complexreferral policies such as
diversity incentives andmulti-currency payouts.
I've got a couple of questionsfor you around this.
Firstly, what's the appetitefor incentives around diverse
hires in 2025?
We've got a couple of questionsfor you around this.
Firstly, what's the appetitefor incentives around diverse
hires in 2025?
(11:13):
We've seen a lot of changes.
We've seen the move away fromthe E in DEI.
We've had more of a focus onstability.
The term SHRM uses this a lot,so I'd love to hear your
experiences around that.
And also, how did you designerin to handle that level of
flexibility and compliance?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
yeah, both great questions, the um.
So I'll tell you that when welaunched 2019, like the biggest
pushback on investing employeereferrals is that it does not
create a diverse organization.
Um, and which is it's when youthink about, is a big statement
assuming that your employeesonly know people that look and
(11:53):
act like them and, at the sametime, already assuming you don't
have a diverse organization,and then that's just going to
snowball that.
So when we built that featureyears ago now at least five
years ago now the goal was tokind of break down some of that
stereotype, and not only that.
(12:16):
So it was basically kind of acountermeasure to like a reason
not to invest in referrals,which is always silly.
But the thing, the problem withdiversity programs is that
their marketing tools they'renot something that your
employees actually participatein.
What I mean by that is you cansay all you want that you
believe in strong diversity, buthow do you actually execute on
that in a company level?
So by adding that feature, wewere able to get the employees
(12:40):
actually participating in thecompany, kind of putting their
money where their mouth is,which is, hey, if you refer,
somebody will pay you, and ifthey qualify as one of these
targeted hires.
We're going to pay you morebecause that's important to our
business and we're going to payyou more because that's
important to our business andwe're going to invest into that.
So it was a really cool featurewhen we launched it, the way it
works.
We don't make any determinationon what qualifies or what
doesn't, so it's more of a kickright.
(13:00):
We call it diversity bonus as amarketing play, but it's
basically hey.
If there's a box checked onthis candidate's application,
for whatever reason, we caninclude a bigger bonus.
So it's super flexible.
You can apply it to basicallyany scenario where you'd want to
incentivize employees to bringin certain talent, this could be
(13:21):
hey.
If they have top secretclearance, you know we can give
them a kicker.
If we had a lot of somecustomers, especially overseas,
where their sales teams weremale dominated, and if it was a
female on the sales team andsales rule, they got the kicker.
So things like that veteransright.
So obviously diversity includesa lot of groups, but it doesn't
(13:44):
necessarily.
It could be anybody withcertain skills that are just
more targeted higher.
To answer your question, theappetite is down.
It is not a topic that comes upnearly as much as it did back
in the day for us, but thefeature is still there.
It can be leveraged for anyorganization that uses our
product.
The other part of your questionis actually the the more
(14:07):
complicated answer and oursecret sauce, right, which is
how do we handle such complexity?
We have one customer, we haveseveral customers, but one in
particular that I'm thinking of,that has, I think, 4 000 bonus
combinations, right, 80 somecountries they're.
They have four business unitsand then they have seven tiers
of jobs, job levels, with akicker.
(14:29):
If you have top secretclearance or secret clearance,
right, two different kickers,right.
So it becomes exponentiallycomplicated because you have a
different policy for everycountry.
You have a different policy forevery business unit in every
country.
You have a different policy forevery job tier for every
business unit in every country,right?
And then you have a morecomplicated one when you add in
secret clearances, right.
(14:50):
So it just becomes amultiplication issue, right?
So the way we built our productback in the day, we just used
heavy customization, heavy,heavy coding that does not scale
, it makes it impossible tomaintain, it makes it impossible
to audit.
So we built out the product tohave like a policy builder that
can be extremely complex, and wepair that with a feature called
(15:12):
groups that allow us to controlthe experience based on the
group that the employee belongsinto.
I know that all sounds prettyboring, so I'm going to give you
a simple example to tie that up.
If I'm in the US and I'mlooking at a job, it's going to
say, hey, mike, you can earn$1,000 for this job.
If you're in the UK, it's goingto say, hey, bill, you can earn
(15:34):
1,200 pounds for this job.
So it actually not only does itmanage what policy you belong
to, but it actually changes theexperience in real time, so that
the employees participatingwill only ever see how much they
can earn in their nativecurrency, not just some number
that exists across the platform.
(15:55):
So by localizing thatexperience, we can definitely
tap into those differentcountries and get higher
participation and ensure thatpayroll pays the right people,
the right amount and the rightcurrency.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You do a very good job at explaining this stuff.
I was reading your bio ahead ofthis, uh, ahead of this
interview.
You come from a biz dev andsales background, um, and when
you say things like you know wewe needed, we needed to add this
feature to prove out thebusiness case, um, it's, it's
very straightforward, youexplain it very well, so I kudos
to you, sir.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I was in there before as a person.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So my next question.
I'm reading it again now.
It's a bit lame, but given yourvery high standard of being
able to produce good answers, itmight become quite interesting
as an answer.
The question is how do you seethe role of employee referrals
evolving over the next few years, especially in the age of AI
and skills-based hiring?
So could have done better withthat question, but I suspect the
(16:55):
answer is going to be quiteinteresting.
Give it a go.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I hope you find it interesting.
So I 100% believe that therewill be a huge swing to AI for
talent acquisition teams.
We're seeing it happen already.
So that's not even aninteresting statement by me.
However, I also believe thiscan be an overinvestment in AI,
meaning that people are gonna goa little too hard into it and
(17:19):
then have to pull back a littlebit and say, eh, maybe we put a
little bit too much faith in therobots, let's get a few more
humans involved, because what AIis really good at doing is
repetitive tasks, and screeningresumes is a perfect example of
a repetitive task.
Now that's and you can removethe bias from it.
You can.
It can work nonstop, right.
So, like AI is a is not goodfor recruiters.
(17:42):
You know.
Period, right.
That said, removing humans fromthe process 100% is also not
good for companies.
So my more recent hot take isthat, as we do this heavy
investment into AI andpotentially overinvestment into
AI employee referrals is a greatway to keep humans involved in
(18:02):
the process and make it muchmore efficient.
You're coming into a worldwhere you know we're leaving, a
world where 60 applications froma job board per one hire is
acceptable.
We're coming into a world whereyou're going to have 10,000
applications per one hire,because AI is being used on both
sides.
It's not just talentacquisition teams using AI, it's
also the candidates using AI,and we can't be mad at them for
(18:24):
it.
If we're going to screen themagainst it, they're going to use
it against them, right?
So you're going to have now aworld where somebody on the job
hunt and we see it already has10,000 applications.
There's going to be a lot ofnoise, a lot of noise.
And how do you create thatconnection, that more personal,
upfront experience, when youdon't have any recruiters left
on your team?
Employee referrals is the secretweapon, right?
(18:46):
So that is keeping that humanelement in there at scale and at
efficiency, right?
And it's still creating avetting process that's not
happening in the interviewprocess today and therefore AI
will not be able to replicate it, because it doesn't exist.
What I mean by that is hey,bill, I refer you for a job, I'm
(19:08):
going to tell you a little bitabout what's up and how it works
here, and you're going to havea little bit more information
than just somebody coming infrom a job board.
You're going to know a littlebit of the dirty laundry in a
good way and that's whyreferrals across the board stay
longer than traditional hires,because there's a level of
vetting that's happening andconnection and culture that's
(19:29):
being established even beforeyou start on day one.
So hopefully that was a solidanswer for you.
But I think you know we'llbring on the AI and we'll bring
in the humans, right.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
A couple of hours ago I was interviewing a C-suite
executive at a very large,well-known brand that I shall
not mention, and we're talkingabout how ai is uh impacting uh
internal ta professionals and umyou know, her line of answers
were a lot were long lines ofit's wonderful, it's freeing up
their time.
Then I asked the follow-upquestion yeah, but how many
(20:04):
people have you let go in thatdepartment over the last year?
31%, 31% went in the last 12months.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
There we go.
I mean you've got to pay forthe tools, right?
I mean that's the thing.
It's an efficiency play.
No one's adding extra costsjust to do it.
So often when those decisionsare made it gets offset
somewhere else, and with ai,it's it.
That's that's why they buy ai.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It's to reduce the cost elsewhere okay, we are
already coming towards the endof this particular conversation,
so my last few questions foryou are those wrap-up questions
where we like to leave ourlisteners with tangible
takeaways.
Uh, so next answer a bit of asummary of some of the things
that you've already said, butI'm going to challenge you to
answer in 60 seconds or less, soin one minute or less.
(20:54):
Mike, for organizationsstruggling with high turnover or
engagement issues, where do yousuggest that they start when
rethinking their referral ormobility strategies?
Go?
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Perfect One.
Automation frees up time andability to do other things, and
it allows you to put inprocesses that are super
cumbersome without technology.
So use technology to automatethe things that you've always
wanted to do.
For example, make referralspart of your onboarding process.
Right, if you're not doing thattoday, technology can enroll
(21:30):
them in a drip campaign from dayone to get them in there.
So, when you're thinking aboutthe things that are holding you
back, if there is software thatcould accelerate that for you,
don't let it hold you backanymore.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh, three seconds to spare, good work.
Okay, let's talk about yourroadmap.
What's coming up for, aaron?
What are you particularlyexcited about that you can share
with our listeners today?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
For sure.
We're working on several reallycool things right now A lot of
engagement factors that justmake it easier for employees to
participate, but also moreadvanced capabilities for the
talent acquisition teamthemselves.
For example, one of the biggestproblems we hear is that when I
hire somebody, they're ready togo right away, but they may not
(22:09):
start for 30 days.
So we have a new feature comingout, called pre-hire, where the
second they get hired they'reable to start participating in
the program.
We'll automatically merge itwith their employee account when
they start and then we'll makesure that they get paid based on
the policy for those pre-hireemployees.
So it's a super cool featurethat really opens up the door to
(22:34):
things that were not possiblebefore.
Um, and you know, that bringsus earlier into the process to
get heavier participation.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Make them part of the program on day one.
I love it.
Uh, you've got a bit of an hrgazette exclusive there, I think
, listeners, um, my penultimatequestion before I ask you how
folks can connect with you hasto be what's up with the sloths
behind you?
So this is an audio onlypodcast, but, um, um, mike is a
very dynamic person, it wouldappear that's what I'm getting
from from this call.
(22:58):
He's, uh, he is a charismatic,gregarious kind of guy, but he's
got a painting of four slothsand a sloth teddy bear behind
him.
So what's that about?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
there's multiple sloth, uh stuffed animals back
there.
You just can't see them.
So, like the?
Uh, the real, the simple storyis I like sloths, but the real
story is that, uh, years ago,when we were doing our first
sherman annual conference, weneeded something to give away
and my whole take was nobodywants our junk, they're just
going to take it, throw it out,so let's not spend the money on
(23:30):
it.
However, what everyone wants issomething to take home for
their kids.
So we got this floppy arm sloth.
We had a hundred of themsitting at the booth and they
went almost immediately.
Everyone had to sign up for ademo to get them.
They didn't care.
They wanted to take somethingback to their kids after being
gone for a week.
So that you know, that kind ofstroke of marketing genius
(23:50):
settled in and we're like well,let's just kind of make that
part of our culture.
It's fun.
Um, like there's cat people anddog people, but everyone's a
sloth person.
So the?
Uh.
You know, if you ever are inpittsburgh and you're at our
office, it will creep you outbecause there's a lot of sloth
stuff all around and justfinally for today, mike, how can
our listeners connect with you?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
is that linkedin, email, instagram, wherever else?
And, of course, how can theylearn more about erin?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
yeah, check us out at erinappcom.
E-r-i-n-a-p-pcom.
My email is just mike aterinappcom, so that's simple
enough.
The harder thing would be tofigure out how to spell my last
name and find me on linkedin,but I invite you to try that as
well and, uh, looking forward tochatting yeah, I do have to say
listen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I did double check with mike the pronunciation of
his surname before we hit recordday, because regular listeners
of this show will know thatpronunciation is not my strong
suit.
Mike, uh, you're a nice chap.
I want to do this again withyou soon, but for now, thank you
very much for being my guest.
Thank you, bill and listeners.
As always, until next time.
Happy working.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
If you enjoyed this episode,why not subscribe and listen to
some of the hundreds of episodespublished by HR Gazette and
remember for what's new in theworld of work?
Subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom.
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