Any user or employee can add a referral or create a referral link in Ashby from their home page, regardless of their permissions. This article explains how to add direct referrals, create and track referral links, configure your referral form and settings, and report on referral data. Share this guide with your users to give them more information on adding referrals via Ashby.

Users without a paid seat can add referrals and create referral links. Users do need to have an Ashby account to add referrals.

Custom referral filters are available on the Legacy Plus, Plus, and Enterprise plans:

With a direct referral, you add one candidate's details at a time and submit them to be reviewed for a role.

With a referral link, you post the job board or a specific job posting to your network (for example, on LinkedIn), and Ashby credits anyone who applies via that link to you.

Watching this video is optional — the written steps below cover the same content.

You can refer a candidate directly for a role in the Referrals section of the Home page.

When adding a direct referral, you need to add the candidate's name and email address and the specific role they are being referred for.

You can also upload a resume and add their phone number, a link to their website, and any notes. An admin can customize the referral form, so you may see some additional or different options here from the form pictured.

Ashby automatically adds a referred candidate to the Application Review stage in the candidate pipeline for the specified role.

You can also add a referral directly to a role by hovering over the + Add button from the top menu and selecting Referral.

Once you click Referral, you need to add the candidate's name and email address and the specific role they are being referred for, just like in the process above.

Referral links allow you to post a link to a specific job posting (or to the job board in general), and Ashby automatically credits candidates who apply via that link to you. A good use case for referral links is sharing a job to a social media platform or another wider forum.

Watching this video is optional — the written steps below cover the same content.

You can create a referral link in the same Referrals section at the bottom of the Home page.

When creating a referral link, you can opt to either have the link direct to a specific posting or to all open job postings listed on your job board.

To create a link for a certain posting, check the Link to specific job posting checkbox, then select the posting from the drop-down menu that follows. To have the link direct to your job board with open postings, leave this box unchecked when creating the link.

You can view all of your personal referrals and their application status by clicking All Referrals. From there, you can view Active referrals (those still in the pipeline), Archived referrals (those who have been archived or rejected), and Hired referrals. Use the radio buttons to view each list of referrals accordingly.

You can head to the Referral Links section in All Referrals to view and amend your referral links.

You can edit your referral form and set referral settings in Admin > Sourcing > Referrals.

Referral settings allow you to set limits on allowing referrals. You can set the following rules:

If a user tries to submit a referral that your rules disallow, they receive a message letting them know that Ashby hasn't allowed the referral, with details of the settings in place.

Use the Allow referral links? option to determine whether users can create referral links.

The Restrict referral status? option determines whether all users referring candidates can view their current interview stage. If enabled, only users with the appropriate permissions to view the candidate profile can view their current interview stage.

You can specify criteria to determine the roles that users can submit referrals or generate referral links for.

Any jobs matching this criteria can accept referrals or can be used to generate referral links.

For example, in the pictured case, users can only submit referrals for jobs in the engineering department.

If you'd like referred candidates to receive a confirmation email at the point of submission:

Click on your Default Referral form to make any amendments, such as adding or removing fields or adjusting the title of the form.

The candidate's name, job, and email address are required fields and you can't remove them. You can add the following field types to your default referral form.

Below are some examples of reports you can run to view key referral data.

To track referrals in intervals, by the user who referred them, navigate to Reports > Build Report and select Count Over Time.

To see a list of currently active referrals from all users, navigate to Reports > Build Report and select Custom List.

Head into All Referrals and be sure to check the Archived and Hired lists. If a user rejects or hires the candidate, they no longer show in the Active list.

To delete or edit the title of a referral link, head to Your Referral Links, click on the title of the link in question, and then click the red trash can icon to delete it.

You can't restore referral links after deletion. Links already shared outside of Ashby continue to work, but Ashby doesn't credit new applications submitted via these links to you. The deletion doesn't impact past applications.

If a candidate applies for a role, then an Ashby user refers them for the same role, the original source (in this case Inbound: Applied) remains on the candidate profile. Ashby updates the Credited To field so the referrer's name is included on the job consideration.

If you allow users to refer candidates that have already been considered for the role, you can opt to use the Referred By field when reporting to ensure that your reporting still includes these referrals, despite the initial source listed in the Source field.

If the referrer has access to view and edit the candidate's profile, they can make any corrections or updates as needed to candidate information. If the referrer is unable to view the candidate profile or make adjustments, they need to reach out to a user with access to make these updates for them once they submit the referral.

No, the referrer needs to log into their own Ashby account to refer the candidate. Ashby always credits the candidate to the user who added the referral or generated the referral link. An admin can amend the user in the Credited To field within the candidate profile if needed.

No, the source applied is fixed. If you would like to create a link that applies a custom source, check out Tracking the source of an application.

No, this isn't currently possible.

We recommend reaching out to the hiring manager or person in your organization responsible for managing the role's pipeline for further information.

We don't support adding application requests directly in the referral confirmation sent to referred candidates. If you add the {Application Request Link} substitution token to your organization's referral confirmation template, the email fails.

Instead, for direct referrals, we recommend configuring an application request automation with conditions specifying that the job consideration is a direct referral (for example, Job Consideration's Is Direct Referral is Yes).

You can also opt to configure a catch-all for candidates who don't have an application completed by a certain stage (for example, setting a condition field to be Job Consideration's Reached Stage Type with the value as Active) to ensure any candidates in active stages are prompted to submit an application for the job consideration. If you create application request automations for referrals, we recommend disabling your referral confirmation template. You can use the application request automation instead to send the referral confirmation and application request in a single email.