Experiencing Rapid Growth and Seeking to Attract Greater Volumes of Talent
UScellular is the fifth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States serving approximately 5.1 million customers, including retail consumers, government, and small-to-mid-size business customers.
UScellular did not have an intuitive process for their associates to refer their friends and family to roles at their company, which meant that they were missing out on a lot of great talent. Their Talent Programs team was looking for a solution that would make the referral process simpler for their Talent Acquisition team and their associates.
UScellular partnered with Talemetry to roll out a new Associate Referral Platform, which would give associates a simple and quick way to refer their friends and family to positions at their company. Their first step was to rebrand the program completely. Their Associate Referral Program was rebranded as the “Strong Connections Referral Program” to give it a new identity and to signify an enhancement to the program.
The second major step was to have Talemetry by Jobvite integrate directly with UScellular’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) by Taleo so their open jobs would automatically appear on the portal, allowing associates to search for open jobs and easily refer their contacts.
The API connection to Taleo also directly connects associate referrals with the recruiters. When a referral is made by an associate, it is automatically pushed into Taleo and notifies the assigned recruiter of the new candidate. As the candidate moves through the recruiting process, the associate receives automated updates from the system, simplifying the process for both the recruiters and the associates as well as adding a level of transparency into the program. The new solution fixed the communication gap between Recruiting and the associates while making their jobs easier.
The impact of UScellular’s new Associate Referral Platform was seen almost immediately. UScellular launched Talemetry in April, 2017 and within the first 90 days, their percentage of referral hires jumped from 10% from the previous quarter to 18.5%, an 8.5% increase.
The team launched the newly invigorated program with the support of their Executive Leadership Team and utilized an email marketing campaign targeted at all of their associates. They held a raffle contest to incentivize their workforce to get involved early on and activate their new referral accounts.
Following their initial campaign, UScellular has continued with other campaigns to increase awareness of the program (FAQs, reminders to refer), target “hot jobs” and hard to fill roles, and gamify the program through more referral and job sharing raffles.
Between UScellular’s launch in April and December 2017, referral hires more than doubled. Now, 1 out of 5 hires is an associate referral made through the Strong Connections Program, powered by Talemetry.
What’s Next?
UScellular is now launching Talemetry’s recently upgraded Gamification Feature, which takes their Strong Connections program to the next level. Gamification will allow the UScellular team to create friendly competition between locations, departments and associates and identify their superconnector referrers (those associates who make the most referrals, job shares and have the most successful referral hires).
The team has also been working on revamping their associate referral bonus structure in an effort to reward associates even more for referring their talented friends, family, and former colleagues to positions at UScellular.
By partnering with Talemetry, UScellular has taken charge of their Associate Referral Program. They have accomplished the following (and more!):
- Simplified their process for both recruiters and associates
- Improved the technology with an easy-to-use platform integrated into their Taleo ATS
- Realigned the program to align with their strong employer brand
- Increased associate engagement with the company
- Grown a significant and high quality source of hires through referrals.
UScellular Evolved Employee Referrals Process
Jobvite’s EVOLVE Talent Acquisition Framework helps TA teams deliver world-class results. From initial assessment to specific action plans, EVOLVE empowers TA leaders to identify and prioritize areas for improvement so that no effort is wasted. Teams, processes, technologies, and strategies are optimized over time, and organizations emerge stronger, more efficient, and better able to adapt to the needs of the ever-evolving talent marketplace.
The EVOLVE framework offers four levels of talent acquisition maturity. Similar companies to UScellular can mature from a Level 1 to a Level 2 by optimizing their people, processes and technology.
About UScellular
UScellular is the fifth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States serving approximately 5.1 million customers, including retail consumers, government, and small-to-mid-size business customers.
