Case study: How referral enables the growth of Philips

Recently Nicole Bueters, Director Talent Acquisition at Philips Benelux, shared her experience with the road to a successful referral program in a multinational. According to their own research, targeted sourcing, referral and internal labor market yield the best quality of hire. External agencies produced the lowest quality of hire. But they didn’t have one structured referral program and made limited use of networks. The approach of how Philips leverage their own employees for referral hiring, coming from scattered small initiatives in departments & sectors, is shown in this presentation.


It gives a great insight in the business case for (boosting) referral hiring and challenges that multinational companies are facing.  The presentation includes everything from concept definition, creation, implementation and evaluation of a new company-wide referral program. The result? Referrals yield 9% of total hires so far.

Do you have an effective employee referral program in place? Let us know in the comments below.

About Jacco Valkenburg

Jacco Valkenburg is an international recruitment expert, trainer and author (5 books). He has more than 20 years experience in global recruitment strategies and execution spanning numerous countries for leading companies. As founder of Recruiter University and Recruit2 he provides companies with recruitment training and consultancy. His mission is helping companies ‘from good to great staffing’.