This seems common for lower-level roles, but I don’t know that I’ve seen it for CEO-type roles. When I think about SF tech companies and the amount they pay to CEOs, the idea of a “referral bonus” of the usual size seems “of the wrong scale”: “Thanks for helping us find this friend of yours who was worth millions to us. Here’s $5,000 for you, friend of an elite executive.”
(Compare to the standard “your old roommate actually was good at programming! Here’s a small bonus,” which is how I picture internal recruiting processes [e.g. Google asking employees to help them find new developers].)
But of course, these firms will also shell out tens of thousands of dollars to recruiting firms for executive searches, so a referral bonus isn’t far from an unreasonable expense in that context.
Yes, the way that worked in consulting for me was that the referral bonus was (very approximately) something like 10% of the hire’s salary. So if someone very senior got hired, you could maybe double your annual paycheck. Not sure that would be appropriate for FHI though...
This seems common for lower-level roles, but I don’t know that I’ve seen it for CEO-type roles. When I think about SF tech companies and the amount they pay to CEOs, the idea of a “referral bonus” of the usual size seems “of the wrong scale”: “Thanks for helping us find this friend of yours who was worth millions to us. Here’s $5,000 for you, friend of an elite executive.”
(Compare to the standard “your old roommate actually was good at programming! Here’s a small bonus,” which is how I picture internal recruiting processes [e.g. Google asking employees to help them find new developers].)
But of course, these firms will also shell out tens of thousands of dollars to recruiting firms for executive searches, so a referral bonus isn’t far from an unreasonable expense in that context.
Yes, the way that worked in consulting for me was that the referral bonus was (very approximately) something like 10% of the hire’s salary. So if someone very senior got hired, you could maybe double your annual paycheck. Not sure that would be appropriate for FHI though...