Word of mouth is consistently one of the best ways to recruit new corps members, and you can empower your corps members and alums to spread the word about doing a service year to their friends and networks. Your corps members and alums can create and share a referral link on ServiceYear.org to encourage their friends to serve, including by sharing a link to a listing you are actively recruiting for.
To get started, you’ll need to invite your corps members and alums to join ServiceYear.org. For currently serving corps members that you haven’t yet enrolled on ServiceYear.org, you can create an invitation link to allow them to confirm their service as a corps member already serving with your program. You can encourage any of your alums that aren't yet registered to sign up as an alum.
How it Works:
You can send a note to your corps members/alums to encourage them to support your recruitment. They’ll just need to:
Join ServiceYear.org: (You can insert your custom invitation link for current corps members, and an alum registration link for alums that haven’t yet joined. If they’ve already joined, you can skip this step!)
Create a referral link: Once logged in, serving corps members and alums can create a referral link from the referrals page in their dashboard, or by clicking the “Refer a Friend” button on your listing (Here, you can also insert a direct link to your listing).
Share the link with friends/people in your network: The link can be shared in numerous formats—via text message, on social media, via email, and more. To help spark some ideas, this referral toolkit has some suggestions, templates, and examples.
Reviewing Candidates Who Applied from a Referral:
As an organization, you will be able to see the specific corps member or alum who referred a candidate when you click on the candidate's details as long as the person who made the referral is enrolled in your organization, has been exited from your organization, or has a public profile on ServiceYear.org. If the person who made the referral has their profile set to private and is not affiliated with your organization, you will not see a name displayed. If you need support identifying the person who made a referral in this instance, please reach out to our team.
In the image above, you can see that the individual was referred by a corps member. As an organization, you will be able to click on the person who referred the position and you will be able to see their full profile.
Consider Incentivizing Participation:
Since referral codes are trackable, you’ll be able to see when someone applies based on a referral shared, and also know if that referral ultimately leads to a successful hire for your next cohort. Corps members and alums will also be able to track stats on how their referral links are leading to new registrations, applications, and enrollments on ServiceYear.org.
You can consider some low-cost/small incentives for referrals that lead someone to apply/interview with your program, or larger incentives for referrals that lead someone to join your next cohort. When thinking of incentives, you can also consider if there might be ways to collaborate with other programs, as well.
Have questions or ideas on corps member and alum referrals? Feel free to reach out to our team.