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Employee Referral Programs

What’s one of the key ways to get a job with a defense contractor?

Leverage a contact who works for a company you are targeting for employment, and ask for a referral. It helps you stand out in a crowded field of job seekers.

Referrals are good hiring sources for companies because they result in quality new hires. Current employees often receive some sort of referral compensation if the person they refer is hired. And people like to work with folks they know they can trust. It’s a winning situation for everyone involved — the job seeker, the current employee and the employer.

Employee referral programs are even more important in the defense contracting sector than in private industry as a whole. For some defense contractors, upwards of 60% of their new hires come from employee referrals. Many companies have recruiters who solely focus on sourcing new hires through current employees. It’s that important.

Large companies such as General Dynamics-IT and Northrop Grumman have created web sites to support their employee referral programs. But it’s not only large defense contractors offering incentives for referrals. Smaller companies such as Invertix and Geneva Software are in the game too. They just don’t have the splashy web sites.

How do you leverage employee referrals? Doesn’t most everything in your job search come back to . . . networking?

In this video Patra Frame shares some tips on making employee referral programs work for you.