Refer a friend

The bit other schemes get wrong

Every referral form we have read asks you for your friend's name, email, mobile, job title and their current employer. Think about what that means. Your mate has not been asked. He does not know a recruitment agency now holds his mobile number. He certainly does not know somebody has told a recruiter where he works.

Under UK GDPR, taking somebody's details from a third party carries its own duty to tell them. Not one of those forms says a word about it. So ours works the other way round.

The promise nobody can actually keep

One agency referral form we read says this, and means it kindly: "We will never mention your name without consent." Read it next to the other thing on the same page, which is that they will hold your friend's name, mobile, email, job title and LinkedIn profile.

Those two promises are in conflict. Anybody can ask an organisation what it holds about them and where it got it. That is a right, not a favour, and it does not have an exception for a referral. So the agency has promised the referrer something it may be required by law to break, and the day it has to break it, two people find out at once.

We are not going to make a promise like that. If somebody gives us a name, we tell that person where it came from, and we say so to the referrer first, before they hand anything over. Nobody is surprised later. That is the whole reason the link is the better way round: if your friend types their own details in, the question never arises.

You send a link. They fill it in themselves.

You get a link with your own code in it. Send it however you like. Your friend puts in their own details, which means we never hold anything about them that they did not type. No agency needs to know somebody's mobile number and current employer before that person has agreed to anything.

If you would rather just give us a name, we tell them it was you.

Some people prefer to say “ring my mate Adrian” and be done with it. We will, and we will take the minimum to do it: a name and one way to reach them. But the FIRST time we contact Adrian we tell him where we got his details and that it was you. He can tell us to delete them and we delete them the same day and do not ring again.

The money is earnings, so it goes through payroll.

It is paid with your wages with tax and National Insurance handled properly. Not cash, not a voucher, not off the books. An agency handing out fifty pounds in an envelope is creating a problem for you as well as for itself.

Half early, half later, and both dates are fixed.

£25 once the person you sent completes their FIRST shift, and £25 once they have completed 10. The usual trick is one payment a long way off, so most referrals never pay out. Getting something in the first week is the point.

One condition, and it is written here.

They have to actually work. That is it. There is no cap on how many people you send us, no expiry on your link, and no clause that lets us decide you did not really refer them.

We will not pay you for somebody already on our books.

If we have already got their CV or they are already registered with us, we will tell you so straight away rather than let you wait for money that was never coming.

It never costs the person you sent anything.

Not a fee, not a deduction, not a lower rate to fund your bonus. They are paid the same as if they had walked in on their own. Charging a work seeker for finding them work is banned outright, and building the cost of a referral into somebody's rate is the same idea wearing a hat.

In short

If somebody has given us your details

You will hear it from us the first time we contact you, along with who passed them on. Tell us to delete them and we do it the same day and you will not hear from us again.

Everything we hold, and how to get it back or get rid of it.