What is Fishbowl?
Fishbowl is an online platform that helps recruiters manage their referral programs effectively and in less time. It also enables your scouts, people that you selected to look for talent for you, to easily search their networks for talent, to upload candidates and to check the status of their referrals.
How to choose the right plan
You can find the details of the different plans here. The first month is for free in all the plans, so you can also figure it out as you go. It is very easy, and without costs, to switch plans.
How to create an account
You can request your account here. We will set it up for you and you will receive an invite to join the platform as a recruiter. When you click on the link in the email, you can create your password and you are all set up.
How to set up
Before you start using Fishbowl you need to do a couple of things:
1. Check your profile settings
2. Check your company settings
3. Check your recruiter settings
Profile settings
Name, Email & Password
Your name & login credentials that you entered in the account creation step.
Language
Your preferred language, English or Dutch.
Avatar
You can upload your avatar or picture.
Company settings
Company name
Your company name that you entered in the account creation step.
Logo
You can upload your company logo, that we will show in Fishbowl emails to your scouts and candidates.
Candidate approval required
You can choose your preferred settings regarding candidate approval. Recruiters are responsible at any time for following GDPR regulations, but we can make it bit easier for you.
If set to ‘No’, your Scouts are required to confirm they have approval from candidates to share data with you.
If set to ‘Yes’ the candidates themselves need to approve sharing their data first, before the application is shared with the recruiters. Candidates will receive an email from Fishbowl, asking them to click ‘Yes’ to share their data.
Recruiter settings
Here you can add recruiters to the account, edit admin rights or remove recruiters. Depending on your subscription the number of recruiters we allow may vary.
How to use Fishbowl
1. Add Scouts
2. Add Jobs
3. Create campaigns
4. Manage applications
5. Manage talent pool
Step 1: Add your Scouts
Scouts are the people in your network that you will ask to help you find candidates. Your employees are the most likely group to start with, but you can also think about alumni, partners or other parties that know your company’s culture and values, and who’s judgement you trust.
Adding a single scout
By adding a name and an email address you add a scout to the system. You also need to add a label so you can later send campaign emails without individually selecting scouts.
Scout will not receive a confirmation email, but when they click on a link in the campaign email they will be asked to complete their account. Scouts can also get their passwords by using the forgot password link in the login screen at platform.fishbowl.work.
Adding scouts in bulk
If you want to enter multiple scouts at once you can upload an XLS(X)-files and ";"-separated CSV-files with name in the first column, email address in the second column and (optional) labels separated by "," in the third column.
Scouts will not receive a confirmation email, but when they click on a link in the campaign email they will be asked to complete their account. Scouts can also get their passwords by using the forgot password link in the login screen at platform.fishbowl.work.
Labeling your scouts
It is important to label your scouts, so you can select groups of scouts in the campaign creation flow. You can simply apply the label “All” to all of them, but you can also do it by department, internal and external employees. In that case you can also diversify the messages you share with them.
Step 2: Add your Jobs
Enter the jobs you want to share. All the jobs you share will be visible to Scouts from the portal they login into, but when you send campaigns you can choose which jobs to include.
Title
Title of your job
Location
Location of the job
Scout bonus
The bonus that scouts will collect when their referral is hired. Bonus is visible for Scouts, but not outside of Fishbowl.
External URL
You can choose to add a link to an external URL, for instance your recruitment website.
LinkedIn keywords
When your scouts receive your campaign email and/or when they login to Fishbowl, they will see a search icon. Clicking on this link will open their LinkedIn, pre-fill first connections, AND pre-fill a search string that you provide. This will make it much easier for them to look for talent.
If you are good with booleans, you can tap on that link and give in a more advanced query. It is usually a good practice to check the query in your own LinkedIn account to make sure it works.
Step 3: Create campaigns
Now that you have your jobs and scouts in Fishbowl, you are ready to send your campaigns. The goal is to make sure that your scouts are aware of open jobs, but also to keep your referral program top of mind.
Campaign flow step 1: Campaign planning
Campaign name
For your own reference you can name your campaign. This will not be visible for scouts.
Frequency
You can send a one-off campaign or plan campaigns on a regular basis. For the latter, make sure you keep your jobs up to date or select latest/newest jobs in step 2.
Date & Time
Select the date or period, and time that you want to send your campaigns. If your date is more than 24 hours from now, we will also send you a reminder to check your campaign.
Scouts
Select to which scouts you want to send your campaign. Scouts need to have a label first, which you can do in the scout menu.
Campaign flow step 2: Compose message
Subject
This will appear in the email message as the subject line.
Message - header text
Here you can type the top of your message for your scouts, that will appear above open jobs.
Select jobs
Here you can select the jobs you want to share with your scouts. You can create a manual selection, or let us pick the newest or oldest jobs you want to share.
Message - footer text
Here you can continue your message for your scouts, that will appear below open jobs.
Step 3: Preview & send
If you are happy with how this looks, you can hit the send your campaign button!
Step 4: Manage applications
Now that you are sending campaigns, the referrals should be starting to come in. When a scout sends a referral, you will be notified by mail and you will see the new referrals in the applications menu.
Status
From the menu you can edit the status of this application. This status will also be visible for the scouts when they log into the platform. When you change the status you can also choose to send a message to the scout to keep them updated.
Edit
When you click on the edit button you can edit the details of this application.
New application (not a referral)
If you want to keep all your applications in Fishbowl, you can also add them yourself.
Step 5: Manage Talent Pool
If there are candidates that you are not hiring right now, but you want to keep track of, you can manage them from the talent pool. By labelling them you can easily keep track of the different types of candidates.
Scout portal
All your scouts will send to the portal if they want to see job details or submit a candidate. As a recruiter you can also check the scout view, by selecting it in the menu bottom left in your screen.
How can you make your referral program a success?
How you want to manage your referral program is up to you, but there are a number of things we would advise you to check before you start activating your referral program
Crystal clear referral program terms
If you are crystal clear about the rules referral program before you start, you can save yourself a lot of difficult conversations. When it comes to getting a bonus (if you choose to), conversations can get heated. Make sure there is no question about who is eligible, which conditions need to be met and when you will pay out.
Referral bonus
You can choose to reward your scouts with a bonus when a referral is hired. Our experience here is that it definitely helps increase the number of referrals you will get. If this should be a financial bonus, or a gift is up to you. Our advice is to choose something that says “we really appreciate your effort and please keep the referrals coming”.
Communicate beforehand what is going to happen and why
There is a big chance many of your colleagues have never heard of referral recruitment. In order for them to participate they need to understand it first. It also helps if you explain why it’s important to your company and how it can help the entire organization. At this stage you can also introduce Fishbowl and how that will help them in the referral process.
Celebrate success
If you have a bonus or not, almost everybody appreciates to be acknowledged for their efforts. So don’t forget to thank your scouts often. This can be in a personal note, but it is also a good practice to call this out in campaign emails that reach all scouts. It’s important that everybody knows referral candidates are taken seriously and other people are succeeding to motivate the rest of the troops.
Management support
Your scouts all have busy lives and a million things to do, but for most companies hiring is at the core of their success which makes recruitment everybody's business. We have noticed that endorsement (or stronger) by management can vastly increase your chances of success.
