Tap ex-employees' recruitment potential: staying connected to ex-employees can pay staffing dividends

Ne to find the right somebody to fill a vacancy or help expand your business? You can advertise, of course, on the other hand more employers are tapping lists of former employee who may be able to provide just the right referrals because they know what kind of workers fit the bill. And, who knows? An employee who retired, or someone who left to take another piece of work might miss the scene and want to tend hitherward back. They just need to be asked.

"Reaching on the outside to former employees has really been rewarding for us," says Jocelyn A. Giangrande, SPHR director of recruitment and HR services at Detroit-based Henry Ford Health a whole (HFHS). "We do a allotment of rehires and find that a significant number of employee who leave our community tend hitherward back," Giangrande says.

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Like many employer HFH is taking paces to actively stay connected with former employee having ground them to be a valuable resource for the nonprofit company's recruitment efforts. While a certain quantity of companies maintain formal alumni networks that allow former employee to diocese job postings, network with their former co-workers and earn coin from referral bonus programs, other companies take a more casual approach by dint of doing things like organizing social occurrences for former employees or sending them occasional newsletter or invitations to company-sponsored activities. more [i]or[/i] less groups operate independently, while others are actually sponsored by dint of the employer.

Whatever the manner of making lots of companies have fix recruitment value in their alumni networks.

Pro of Returning Workers

The advantages of pursuing former employee says Alice Snell vice president of San Francisco-based Taleo Research, a division of Taleo Corp., are that "they are known commodities and are considerably les expensive to bring back than having to advertise, which can become a large part of your recruiting budget" If employer maintain a useful relationship with their former, high-quality employee Snell says those ex-employee "can become an of the first grade source of referrals or approach back themselves."

And there are other positive side consequences "When former employees return," she says, "they can bring back competitive intelligence and have a broader knowledge of the market." They also can be instrumental in helping disentangle newer workers, she says: Ex-employee who turn back "can act as mentors for the other recruits who are fresh to the scene."

According to Monique Brannon, national director of recruiting for the Cincinnati office of accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP former employee "know our agriculture and they know the impressed signs of clients we serve, which makes abundant less of a need for training and orientation."

Giangrande of HFH echoe those sentiments. A big dividend in rehiring former employee she maintains, "is the fact that we don't have to do a allotment of retraining, because their learning bend s are significantly reduced." Rehires also understand the organization's tillage Giangrande adds, "so you have a better chance of retaining them a next to the first time around."

flat so, HFHS makes a deviseed effort to get rehires back up to spe "We have a new-hire orientation session each Monday, and as much as 20 percent of the audience is made up of alumni rehires who may not know about fresh projects," Giangrande says.

Susan B Whitcomb--executive director of the California-based Career Masters Institute, a professional cluster of career consultants, career coaches and job-search strategists--agrees that the familiarity former employee bring proffers big benefits. In fact, she believes that individual of the main reasons employer are combing their alumni ranks for possible rehires is the fact that these individuals know the organization and understand its business straits and culture.

Whitcomb also points on the outside that the employees themselves are proven commodities. "You've gotten to know them," she says. "There won't be any surprises, because you know what you are dealing with."

She adds that going back to a former employer can create loyalty and advantageous will on the part of a returning employee because it present to views the value the organization places upon them, and that can translate into greater productivity.

Staying in Touch

Employer can't gain the benefits that returning employee tender without some effort, however.

individual of the main reasons employee turn back to HFHS, Giangrande explains, "is because we maintain contact by the agency of keeping them updated with what's going on" To detain in touch, she says, "e-mail notices and postcards are sent on the outside to announce upcoming recruitment activities where former employee are invited to join in."

"When advantageous employees leave for another piece of work early retirement or whatever," Giangrande says, "we don't want to suffer them go quietly and just forget about us." That's on what account the company is putting together a novel alumni recruitment campaign called Reselling the employ Proposition, Giangrande says. She describes the campaign as an effort "to explain in what manner we will build relationships and cultivate the fastening with former employees."