Gem ATS: Referrals

Overview

Your employees can use Gem ATS to submit referrals to your recruiting team through a customizable form that’s routed through a standardized referral flow. This lets your company collect referrals from employees in an organized fashion.

Typically, at most companies hiring for knowledge workers, a common rough benchmark is that up to 30% of hires are made from referrals. It’s important to provide an easy-to-use internal referral process with multiple options for referring candidates, including referral links and manual uploads.

Requirements

To enable and manage referrals, your team needs to have Gem as your ATS. If you don’t have Gem ATS but are interested in adding it, please contact your Gem Customer Success Manager.

Enable referrals

Although employees don’t need Gem licenses to access Gem to submit referrals, only Gem ATS admins can enable and disable the referral form, including creating and editing referrals.

To enable or disable referrals:

1. Go to Admin settings > Gem ATS > Referrals.
2. Select Enable referral submissions to toggle itON. Referrals are enabled by default for all Gem ATS customers.
3. In the Referral form section, select which fields and custom questions you want to appear in your referrals form for employees to fill out. Note that the Resume upload field always appears at the top of the form. This is because upon uploading a resume, Gem automatically parses the resume and populates corresponding fields, such as name and email address.

The Default Fields are candidate identifiers and are tied to certain fields in the candidate profile and their applications. The email address provided will be the one used to communicate with the referral about their application going forward.

The referral form comes with a few custom questions that are already created for all customers:

• How do you know this person?
• How well do you know this person’s work?
• Is your referral actively looking for a new role?
• Does this person know they are being referred?

These Gem-provided custom questions are fully editable (and optional) and are intended to be a starting point to collect this type of information during referral submission.

Gem ATS admins can configure custom referral questions the same way they configure custom application questions. For example, “How do you know this person?” or “In what capacity have you worked with them?”

Disable referrals

Gem ATS admins can disable a referral form. To do so, go to Admin settings > Gem ATS > Referrals and toggle OFF Enable referral submissions.

Enable referral links

Only Gem ATS admins can enable and disable referral links. To do so:

1. Go to Admin settings > Gem ATS > Referrals.
2. Select Enable referral links to toggle it ON. Referral links are enabled by default for all Gem ATS customers.

Disable referral links

Gem ATS admins can disable referral link functionality. To do so, go to Admin settings > Gem ATS > Referrals and toggle OFF Enable referral links.

Bulk deactivate referral links

Gem ATS admins can also bulk deactivate referral links from the list of referral links. Note that referral links can’t be bulk reactivated, and can only be individually reactivated by the users who created them.

To bulk deactivate all or a set of referral links, complete the following steps:

1. Go to ATS > My Referrals.
2. Select All referral links in the top navigation. Only admins can see this tab.
3. Select the checkbox next to each of the referral links in the list that you wish to disable. You can also bulk select all referral links by selecting the checkbox at the top of the list.
4. Select the Deactivate # links button on the right.

A confirmation appears stating that the links have been deactivated.

Create and manage referral links

You can generate a unique referral link for any job post in Gem or for job board posts outside of Gem. When candidates apply through your unique referral link, you’ll get credit for referring that candidate. Candidates who apply through your referral links are listed as Referral link under the referral type on your My referrals page.

Referral links become invalid if the job is disabled in your team settings or if you deactivate your referral link.

Create a new referral link

To create a new referral link, go to ATS > My Referrals, select My referral links , then select the + New referral link button in the top right.

Select the job that this referral link is for in the job post drop-down, add an optional link name, then select the Create referral link button.

To generate a unique URL to your full job board, select the Link to job board checkbox instead of an individual job post.

Your new referral link appears on the My referral links tab. To copy the link to paste elsewhere, select the Copy button on the right side of the link as it appears in the list.

Deactivate a referral link

You can deactivate any referral link at any time. To deactivate an active referral link, go to ATS > My Referrals, select theMy referral links tab, select the Actions option to the right of the referral link, then select Deactivate.

A confirmation appears stating that this referral link has been deactivated, and the status updates to Deactivated on your referral links page.

Reactivate a referral link

To reactivate a deactivated referral link, go to ATS > My Referrals, select theMy referral links tab, select the Actions option to the right of the referral link, then select Activate.

Submit a referral

To submit referrals, employees can log in to Gem and navigate toMy Referrals and click + New referral. Although they do need to log in to Gem, employees do not need Gem licenses to access Gem to submit referrals.

Employees can select up to 3 different jobs (job posts) to refer the candidate to.

Note that the resume upload field will always appear as the first field after the job selection menu, since Gem parses resume files and auto-fills the subsequent fields, such as name and email, if possible.

If an employee has already filled out other fields, such as name and email, manually before uploading a resume, we will not overwrite those fields with the parsed resume info.

After a referral is submitted

The application flow is the same for candidate who apply directly and candidate who apply via a referral link.

Application created

Gem creates applications for the referred candidate in each of the selected jobs (up to 3).

• If the candidate already exists in Gem , we automatically detect the duplicate profile and will not create another one (based on email or LinkedIn URL).
• If the candidate already has an active application for the same job(s) that they were referred to, then we merge the referral into the existing application(s), instead of creating a duplicate application in a job they’re already on.
• The candidate will still show up in the employee’sMy Referrals page even though a new application was not created.
• The candidate’s application will preserve its original created date and application source, but referral custom questions will be appended to the application for the recruiter’s context.

Profile

The referred candidate’s application source is set to “Referral” (as is the Gem profile source, if the candidate didn’t previously exist in Gem), and the candidate’s Activity feed shows who the referrer is and for which job (s).

My Referrals page

Employees can view all their referrals and the high-level status of their referrals on this page in Gem.

Scorecard detail modal

Interviewers (without access to the rest of Gem ATS) cannot see that a candidate they’re interviewing was referred (e.g. in the right side of the scorecard detail modal where the candidate’s info is shown).

Profile page > Application detail

Users with eligible permissions can see answers to custom referral questions:

Custom referral questions appear even if the candidate already had an open application on the same job before they were referred (i.e. we merge the applications but retain the custom referral questions since they provide helpful context for the recruiter, even if the referrer won’t get credit for that candidate).

Application Review

Users can view answers to custom referral questions, but can’t filter on them.

Prospect Search

• Filter on “Source” = “Referral”.

Talent Compass

• Filter on “Gem Profile Source” = “Referral”.
• Filter on “Gem ATS Application Source” = “Referral”.

Please note: This would apply only to new candidates added to Gem via a referral. If they already existed in Gem before they were referred, their original profile source remains the same.

This is separate from the “Gem Profile Source”: each application has its own source (e.g. a candidate could apply first and then be referred a few years later, and each application would have its own source, but their overall Gem profile source would be set from the first time the candidate entered the system, i.e. when they applied directly).

Current limitations

• Job followers and the referrer are not notified after a referral is submitted.
• Employees are not notified as their referrals move through the interview process - they can only see the high-level status of their candidates by checking My Referrals.
• It’s not currently possible to refer candidates without having to associate them to a job (i.e. passive candidate referrals) though it’s something we’ll work on soon.

• Overview
• Requirements
• Enable referrals
• Disable referrals
• Enable referral links
• Disable referral links
• Bulk deactivate referral links
• Create and manage referral links
• Create a new referral link
• Deactivate a referral link
• Reactivate a referral link
• Submit a referral
• After a referral is submitted
• Application created
• Profile
• My Referrals page
• Scorecard detail modal
• Profile page > Application detail
• Application Review
• Prospect Search
• Talent Compass
• Current limitations