Mirakl: Create a sourcing machine with Trusty employee referral

Mirakl, the world's leading marketplace publisher

Mirakl develops a software solution that enables businesses to create their own online marketplace. Mirakl is now the leading marketplace publisher in the world. The largest e-commerce operators in France have their marketplace with Mirakl (Décathlon, Galeries Lafayette, Fnac Darty, etc.). Mirakl is also very present internationally: Macy's (the local Galeries Lafayette) in the USA or El Corte Ingles in Spain to name but a few have their marketplace on Mirakl.

Business challenges that match their ambitions

In our first exchanges with Mirakl, 2 business issues stood out:

1- Expand geographically

• In new countries where they want to deploy their marketplaces solutions that allow local e-commerce players to resist the hegemony of Amazon;

2- Deploy new business verticals

• In order to support sectors that have not yet reformed their e-commerce, or that are not very digitalized (especially in B2B).

Business challenges that rely on strong growth of Mirakl teams, with important objectives in terms of recruitment:

• Sales profiles and consultants in these new countries;
• Technical profiles in France to continue developing the product.

Mirakl currently has 650 employees, and they aim to be 1,000 by the end of 2022, then 1,500 by the end of 2023. The recruitment stakes are therefore high, with 850 new people to be recruited in 2 years.

Recruitment issues, employee referral as a sourcing strategy

Mirakl's main challenge in recruiting is sourcing candidates.

Mirakl has an excellent recruitment team that is very effective in evaluating candidates in the process. However, in order to enrich the candidate pipeline, it is essential to find the best relays to optimize the balance between quantity and quality of candidates received.

Our recruitment teams are very good at evaluating candidates. We are almost certain of the quality of the people to whom we make offers. On the other hand, it is an extremely selective machine and like all selective machines, you have to feed them a lot to make them work.

In fact, in order to enrich this recruitment pipeline, it was necessary to find a growth relay for their sourcing of candidates. Without falling into the trap of intensive sourcing of candidates, which certainly allows to have more candidates in the pipe, but candidates who are not necessarily the most suitable and who waste precious time for the recruitment teams.

The employee referral seemed to be an axis to develop on which Guillaume wished to capitalize.

Given the level of employee engagement at Mirakl, I was convinced that there was a real relay to be found in employee referral.

However, when he arrived at Mirakl, Guillaume wanted to overhaul the entire employee referral program to make it a true pillar of their candidate sourcing.

Several optimizations had been spotted by Guillaume:

• A process for co-opting that is too complex and restrictive:
• By email, the process was too complex and time-consuming for the employees. In addition, it did not allow any follow-up of the program and required a re-entry of information that was too time-consuming for the recruitment teams.
• A bonus from employee referral that is gracious but not very engaging
• A one-time bonus paid at the end of the probationary period (up to 8 months in France) was much too late to generate a real reward that would engage the teams.

In addition, Guillaume wanted to set up a tool that would allow precise tracking of each employee referral in order to be able to reward the effort of employee referral and not only the recruitment.

We wanted to add a progressive bonus to reward the effort of employee referral. Because employee referral is not just "I send a name" but it is: I found someone, I contact him, he answers me, I coach him and I convince him to accept and I participate in his onboarding.

An original employee referral bonus that was launched in parallel with the implementation of Trusty. The employee referral bonus was more than well received by the employees and proved to be a real success in the implementation of this new program at employee referral.

The secrets of a progressive and engaging employee referral bonus

One of the keys to the success of Mirakl's employee referral program is its premium.

Guillaume set up a progressive bonus at employee referral as soon as Trusty was launched:

An employee can receive up to €4,000 in bonuses at each employee referral :

• 1000€ as soon as a employee referral sent validates the interviews of the recruiter and the manager in charge of this recruitment. Here the co-opter plays the role of coach and prepares the candidate for the Mirakl process.
• 1500€ upon recruitment. As soon as the recruitment is validated, the co-opting party receives a new bonus. The role of the co-optant was essentially to convince the co-optee to finish the process and accept the proposal made by Mirakl.
• 1,500 after 6 months if the new recruit is still part of Mirakl's ranks. At this stage, the co-opting party acts as a trusted intermediary and ensures the best possible onboarding for the new recruit.

This progressive bonus, which rewards each investment made by the co-opter in the candidate's process, has been very well received by the teams. This new bonus policy, coupled with Trusty, has generated a higher volume of co-opted candidates since its launch.

Trusty, an indispensable tool for scaling up

In addition to an innovative and attractive bonus, Mirakl wanted to manage, industrialize and animate their employee referral program to make it a real asset in their recruitment mix.

Thanks to Trusty, several obstacles have been removed and have allowed a global commitment of all the teams:

• A simplified employee referral
• An automated animation
• Customized reporting to meet the challenges of a unique employee referral program
• Increased visibility on social networks thanks to the commitment of each employee
• A centralization of employee referrals for recruiters, and an automated follow-up of employee referrals for cooptants

employee referral simplified :

Trusty, which is 100% integrated with the company's Slack, has enabled almost the entire company to adopt it. A much simpler and more intuitive employee referral process that naturally allows for faster team engagement.

The experience of employee referral is much more fluid with Trusty. Each co-opter can follow their employee referrals from the tool. They are also aware of the recruiter in charge of the employee referral, which makes it much easier to follow up when necessary and avoids the feeling of co-opting profiles that get lost in the limbo of the ATS.

#automatedanimation:

Shortly after the launch of Trusty we saw a real emulation around the employee referral which was facilitated by all the animation and gamification done by Trusty around the program of employee referral :

• New jobs highlighted weekly on Slack
• Highlighting of the most involved employees in the employee referral
• Highlighting of success stories (recruitments by employee referral, records, monthly statistics ...)

This is a real plus that ensures a total emulation of the teams around the employee referral. This transforms recruitment into a 100% collaborative approach that is extremely effective in sourcing the best candidates.

personalized reporting

In addition to animation, it was important for Guillaume to be able to effectively monitor the impact of employee referral on his recruitment mix. In addition, detailed reporting was necessary to support his progressive bonus policy based on the commitment of the co-optants:

Trusty sends us a monthly report based on the ATS steps, which allows us to validate the bonuses according to the evolution of each employee referral in the recruitment process. [...] All of this requires a reporting architecture that is strong enough to allow us to scale up. When you have less than 50 recruitments per year, it is still possible to do it manually, but as soon as you start to grow quickly, it is no longer possible.

increased visibility on social networks: employer brand

From the outset, Trusty has helped boost Mirakl's employer brand thanks to the posts made by employees on social networks. In fact, Trusty provides each user with a unique link from employee referral listing all Mirakl offers, which is massively shared on social networks by each user. In 8 months, more than 320 Mirakl employees have shared their unique employee referral link (MagicLink).

On the recruitment side, it was our first big employer branding action. We managed to create a real momentum around "Mirakl is recruiting!" which was spread to targets that we might never have reached even with Linkedin targetting campaigns. These unique link shares (MagicLink) have generated nearly 50,000 clicks since the launch!

a centralization of employee referrals

Trusty is a 100% integrated solution. The recruitment teams no longer have to re-enter employee referral on their Application Tracking System (ATS). All the employee referrals are sent to the ATS and the evolution of the candidates in the process generates a notification to the co-opting company to inform them of the evolution of their candidate.

Previously, all of our recruiters received employee referrals on a shared email loop. They had to check if the candidate was in their department, and if so they had to re-enter it in the ATS. [...] With Trusty, the employee referrals are sent directly to the ATS, it's much simpler, faster and we don't lose any co-opted candidates. It makes our follow-up much easier.

The employee referral website is an extremely relevant source of applications in a very tight market

To conclude, Guillaume's recommendation for any company wishing to capitalize on employee referral to recruit:

It is really important to see employee referral as a noble source of candidates that is honestly remunerated at its fair value. It is important not to consider employee referral as an asset, which should not be exploited because it is too dangerous in terms of diversity: it is WRONG!

The act of employee referral should be played down and seen for what it is: an extremely relevant source of application in a very tight market.

The progressive incentive, even if not as extensive as Mirakl's, is a real strength to a employee referral program. In addition to showing each employee how hard sourcing is, it values the fact that the co-opter's effort is ongoing. It's not just I find someone, I push them, and then the recruiting team does the rest. It is a whole process of accompaniment that the co-opting company must undertake throughout the recruitment process.

Thank you to Guillaume Saintagne, Director of Recruitment at Mirakl, for his feedback on his use of trusty and his valuable advice for the implementation of an effective internal strategy employee referral . Mirakl is recruiting, find all open positions on their job board. If you want to know more about Trusty, find all the information on our website

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